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NATURE AND COGNITION OF 
SPACE AND TIME 



BY 

REV. JOHNSTON ESTEP WALTER 

•1 

Author of ' ' The Perception of Space and Matter ' ' and 
"The Principles of Knowledge" 




Johnston and Penney 
West Newton, Pa. 



su 



633 
.W3 



Copyright, 1914, by 
Johnston Estep Walter 



JAN 27 1314 



CI.A362345 



X-« 



PREFACE. 

The following discussion of the Nature and our 
Cognition of Space and Time is grounded on the 
fundamental postulates of dualistic Realism. It 
maintains the reality of space and time in contra- 
diction to the Kantian hypothesis of ideality; space 
being held to be real as an independent entity, and 
time as an attribute or property of entities. 

In this period of idealistic vagueness and wordi- 
ness and of eccentricity and novelties in philosophy, 
the positive and unequivocal advocacy of the prin- 
ciples of realism is likely to be imputed to bold 
assertiveness that is the stronger because of igno- 
rance of the history and trend of philosophy; or 
to belatedness and incompetency. It must expect 
satirical and slashing reprobation certainly from the 
followers of the Berkeleian and the Kantian ideal- 
ism, and from those who are captivated with the 
subtilties and pretensions of what is strangely called 
the "new realism." 



4 Space and Time. 

Some fifty years ago there occurred in this coun- 
try an extraordinary change as to the prevalent 
type of philosophy. Formerly the Scottish realistic 
philosophy, — the philosophy of Reid, Hamilton, 
Mansel, McCosh, — was very generally current with 
us, being accepted and taught in most of our insti- 
tutions of learning, and esteemed widely in philo- 
sophical circles. But there came a great revolu- 
tion. The realists to a very considerable extent 
surrendered their supremacy, and subsided; and 
the idealists came into the ascendency. Singularly 
enough, those modes of idealism which the Scottish 
philosophy had most strenuously combated, at last 
superseded it, especially among very many of our 
professional psychologists and metaphysicians and 
in a large number of our colleges and universities. 

This great mutation was remarkable both for 
its suddenness and celerity, and for the absence of 
commotion and conflict. It all happened as if in a 
night. One day the Scottish realists chiefly were 
our teachers in philosophy ; the next, idealists sat in 
their seats. It all happened, too, with very little or 
no turmoil or struggle. There was no clashing of 



Preface. 5 

opposing protagonists ; there was no bitter and stub- 
born strife. The one party quietly withdrew from 
the field, making no show of determined resistance; 
the other quietly entered, without the necessity of 
a resolute and persistent onslaught. There occurred 
at that time an unusual inflow of European, espe- 
cially Germanic, idealistic philosophy, which may be 
reckoned as the chief occasion of the change. 

These characteristics of the change were not 
creditable to the country; for they revealed the 
want of depth and thoroughness in our philosoph- 
ical culture, and our liability to be carried about 
with any wind or arrival of speculative doctrine. 
If the prevalent philosophy had had a profound and 
strong hold on the national life, from thorough con- 
sideration and understading of its principles, such 
a change in such a manner would have been impos- 
sible. It would have held its place with obstinate 
spirit, and would have been supplanted only by very 
capable and resolute assault. So to speak, many 
heads would have been broken and much blood spilt 
before the contest was finished. The change would 
thus have had at any rate the dignity of a revolu- 



6 Space; and Tims. 

tion, and not the reproach of a flop. It may be 
remarked in general that, while we may claim as a 
nation originality and greatness in many things, as 
in the physical arts and sciences and in the science 
and conduct of political government, yet in philos- 
ophy we are now, as we have long been, for the 
most part, copyists and borrowers. 

Idealism, then, became remarkably prevalent and 
preponderant with our learned men and societies; 
and, probably in part because of the facility and 
rapidity with which it rose to the supremacy, it 
has been, and is not now less, notably dogmatic, 
arrogant and intolerant. One characteristic of its 
domination is the fact that it largely controls the 
publication of philosophical products, or the stamp- 
ing of them with "Imprimatur," through its dis- 
ciples as proprietors or editors of philosophical 
magazines and as readers and advisers to publishers. 
What was idealism's gain was, of course, realism's 
loss ; but the latter retained, and still retains, its old 
hold upon the popular mind, — a possession that 
must not be undervalued. 

In the crisis spoken of, the realists were dis- 



Preface. 7 

advantaged, and to that extent rendered incapable 
of holding their ground defiantly and triumphantly 
against the advancing idealists, even if they had 
been fully determined in mind to do so, by their 
method of philosophizing. They relied to their hurt 
upon the a priori method and upon " belief s" of 
which they were possessing and offering no scien- 
tific account. Reliance upon the empirical method 
alone, with no seeking of aid at all from the a priori, 
is the true policy of realism and the foundation and 
assurance of its future. It may be here observed, 
that idealists pay little or no attention to the later 
presentations of realism made in compliance with 
experiential canons, and are ignorant of them. This 
is made evident by their stereotyped criticisms upon 
"naive realism." Many of their stock animadver- 
sions are inept towards genuine empirical realism. 
We should not cease to expect that, in the faith- 
ful and thorough employment of empirical processes 
and principles, a better day will come for realism; 
a day when it shall have, with release from insolent 
and truculent disparagement, prosperity and prog- 
ress, and the honor of a fair acknowledgment of 



8 Space and Time. 

its worth, and when idealists, on their part, shall 
exhibit a magnanimous and hearty tolerance, and 
ability to appreciate truth that is outside the ruts 
or channels of their own thinking. The writer 
would be glad, because of the issues involved, if he 
should be permitted to live to behold that day or 
its dawning. 

If the present work shall find favor in the eyes 
of the philosophic public, it will be followed, prob- 
ably after no great interval, by a psychological 
essay, based on the same realistic principles and 
having the same aim, under the title of Subject and 
Object. In the discussion of Subject, psychology 
"with a soul" will be maintained with particular 
reference, and with particular opposition, to the 
psychology of Hume and his present-day followers. 
Some attention will be given to one of the most 
singular conceptions in all the history of philosophy, 
namely, that of an unsubstantial "permanent pos- 
sibility" of thought or experience. As to Object: 
Matter and the perception of it will be treated with 
special regard to the Berkeleian immaterialism. 



Preface 9 

The writer has the temerity to hold that Berkeley's 
argument against the possibility of a representative 
knowledge, and against the existence, of external 
matter, deemed by idealists to be unanswerable, does 
yet really admit of a fair answer. It can be demon- 
strated that Berkeley advocated principles which 
may be turned to his own confutation. Other topics 
of the essay will be Subject and Object in their 
ontological Relation, and Truth considered as the 
correspondence of thought to its object. 

The: Author. 



CONTENTS. 



page; 

CHAPTER I. 
Rdauty and Nature of Space; 13 



CHAPTER II. 
Our Cognition of Space: 63 

CHAPTER III. 
(Supplementary to Chapter II.) 

Localization of the; Tactual Sensations. 103 

CHAPTER IV. 

Nature; and Cognition of Time; 126 

I. Re;aIvITy and Nature; of Time;. 
II. Our Cognition of Timf. 



NATURE AND COGNITION OF SPACE 
AND TIME. 



CHAPTER I. 

REALITY AND NATURE OF SPACE. 

What is Space) ? This is indeed an old, but still 
a living, metaphysical question. Is Space a reality 
or a property or relation of realities? Or is it a 
form of our subjective thought having no reality in 
the mind or outside. to which it corresponds? Is it 
only an appearance, a fictitious appearance, being 
unreal either as an entity or property? 

According to the common thought and con- 
viction, space is real empty room, illuminated or 
colored, continuous, tridimensional, homogeneous, 
permanent, or vast but unknown extension. Philo- 
sophical realists hold to the common conception of 
space, with the exception of light or color. This 
property they regard as a phenomenal projection 
from the mind into space; or the projection of a 
property of the subjective precept of space, which 



14 Space and Time. 

property does not picture a property of objective 
space. Space, at least as to its extension, is held 
to be a reality wholly independent of our thought 
productive or projective. 

But the majority, the great majority apparently, 
of the philosophical minds of our time entirely 
reject the common and realistic view of space, and 
strive to maintain rather the ideality or non-reality 
of space. It is said that space has no existence con- 
sidered as a reality external to and independent of 
the mind. By many, particularly by the followers 
of the Kantian thought and phraseology respecting 
space, space is regarded as an a priori form of our 
pure subjective perception. It is declared, in effect, 
to be but a phenomenon or appearance, which has 
no real extension in itself, is no true presentation 
of the real extension of the mind or of any object 
in the mind, and is no true representation of any- 
thing outside the mind. The appearance of space 
is supposed, in general, to have not the slightest 
dependence upon or relation to actual space or ex- 
tension. It is also variously held by many that 
space or the thought of space is generated by the 
mind from the absolutely non-spatial. A creative 
synthesis or fusion is postulated, by which the spa- 
tial arises from constituent elements, sensations, that 






Reauty and Nature of Space. 15 

in themselves, while different in quality, are exten- 
sionless. It is assumed that by the genetic activity 
of the mind the spatial is caused to appear from 
series of sensations that are purely temporal, that 
are pure sequences, or pure reversible sequences, 
the terms of the series having in themselves or at 
the first no space intervals between them whatever. 
According to this view, time is original, but space 
derivative or generated. 

The idealistic philosophers reject the ordinary 
realistic view of space on various grounds. Of 
these grounds is their supposition that that view is 
"self-contradictory/' that it involves us in "alter- 
native impossibilities of thought/' etc. They also 
urge the point that the space of the realists has no 
attributes, especially that it has no force, mobility 
or activity, and is therefore incapable of making 
any impression on us by which it might make itself 
known to us. They contend that what' has no power 
to affect us can not be said to exist. It is further 
argued that the doctrine of the realists implies a 
duality in ultimate reality, makes space an entity 
distinct from and independent of the Supreme 
Being. 

The conclusion of idealists that the space of the 
realists contradicts itself, or "leaves us nothing but 



16 Space and Time. 

a choice between opposite absurdities," is based in 
part upon arguments that relate particularly to the 
full extension and the divisibility, or the maximum 
and the minimum, of space. It should be noted, 
by the way, that these arguments, as employed by 
many later metaphysicians, are drawn largely from 
Kant's discussion of the "antinomy of pure reason." 
1. We shall proceed to consider, first, the rea- 
soning of idealists against the reality of space, or 
against the reality of space as we think of it, based 
upon the unknownableness of, and the self-contra- 
dictoriness of our thought about, the entire exten- 
sion of space. Mr. Herbert Spencer thus states 
the familiar argument: "We find ourselves totally 
unable to form any mental image of unbounded 
Space; and yet totally unable to imagine bounds 
beyond which there is no Space/ J * Upon grounds, 
of which this our inability to think of space as 
either unbounded or bounded, as either infinite or 
absolutely finite, is a principal part, Mr. Spencer 
concludes that space is "wholly incomprehensible "; 
that the immediate knowledge which we seem to 
have of it proves, when examined, "to be total igno- 
rance"; f that our idea of space is a wholly sub- 



* First Principles, p. 48. "fib., p. 50. 



REALITY AND NATURE OF SPACE. 17 

jective notion resembling not in the slightest degree 
an objective reality or objective space. From the 
fact of our inability to think of space as absolutely 
limited, or from the compulsion that is upon us to 
think of every space as having space beyond, Mr. 
F. H. Bradley likewise argues: Space " passes 
away into the search for an illusory whole. It is 
essentially the reference of itself to something else, 
a process of endless passing beyond actuality. As 
a whole it is, briefly, the relation of itself to a 
non-existent other. For take space as large and as 
complete as you possibly can. Still, if it has not 
definite boundaries, it is not space; and to make it 
end in a cloud, or in nothing, is mere blindness and 
our failure to perceive. A space limited, and yet 
without space that is outside, is a self-contradic- 
tion. But the outside, unfortunately, is compelled 
likewise to pass beyond itself; and the end can not 
be reached. And it is not merely that we fail to 
perceive, or fail to understand, how this can be 
otherwise. We perceive and we understand that it 
can not be otherwise, at least if space is to be space. 
We either do not know what space means ; and, if 
so, certainly we can not say that it is more than 
appearance. Or else, knowing what we mean by 
it, we see inherent in that meaning the puzzle we 

(2) 



18 Space and Time. 

are describing. Space, to be space, must have space 
outside itself. It forever disappears into a whole, 
which proves never to be more than one side of a 
relation to something beyond." * With such rea- 
soning, not remarkable for well-chosen terms, clear- 
ness and strict sequence, Mr. Bradley concludes 
that space is not a truly known reality, but only a 
" contradictory appearance." 

There can be no question about our inability to 
think of space either as infinite or absolutely lim- 
ited; here are indisputable " alternative impossibili- 
ties of thought," opposite contradictories; but this 
fact furnishes no support to Mr. Spencer' s para- 
doxical conclusion that space is therefore altogether 
incomprehensible, that our knowledge of it is all 
ignorance, that our idea of space can not be in the 
least a true representation of objective space. We 
do not know the whole of space or space as a whole ; 
but we certainly know portions of space. There is 
no cogency in the reasoning that since we know not 
the extreme regions of space we have therefore no 
true knowledge of its interior regions. Is it not a 
fact that we have clear knowledge of, that we can 
definitely measure, the sphere of space within the 



* Appearance and Reality, pp. 37, 38. 



R^AUTY AND NATURE OF SPAC£. 19 

orbit of the moon ? We know its radius to be about 
240,000 miles. Further, have we not clear thought 
of, can we not definitely measure, the vastly greater 
sphere of space within the orbit of the earth? Is 
not its radius truly known to be about 92,000,000 
miles? Surely the fact that we can not think of 
space as extending infinitely beyond the orbit of 
the earth, or of it as at some distant point outside 
this orbit absolutely finite or having no other space 
beyond, has not the slightest force against the 
reality of space within the orbit and the truthfulness 
of our knowledge of it. We know the space within 
the orbit of the earth, and we know the immediately 
related outside space between the orbit of the earth 
and the orbit of Mars ; but this outside space does 
not seem to be necessary to a real knowledge of the 
inside sphere or portions ; knowledge of it does not 
save the knowledge of the latter from being pure 
ignorance. Again, we know the space within the 
orbit of Mars, and also the immediate outer space 
between the orbit of Mars and the orbit of Jupiter ; 
but this outer space can not be said to be necessary 
to a true knowledge of the inner sphere; or at any 
rate knowledge of its full extent does not save the 
knowledge of the inner sphere from being pure 
ignorance; or ignorance of its full extent would not 



20 Space; and Time. 

render the knowledge of the inner sphere total illu- 
sion. Just as truly our ignorance of the complete 
extension of space beyond the orbits of Jupiter and 
all the planets, whether it is infinite or somewhere 
absolutely limited, can not reasonably be said to 
determine the worth or reality of our knowledge of 
the spaces within these orbits. All the ponderous 
logic of the "alternative impossibilities of thought" 
has not the least pertinency or power against the 
truthfulness of our knowledge of the greatest sphere 
of space which we know and the interior lesser 
spheres. As far as this logic goes, we may con- 
tinue to adhere as confidently as ever to the simple 
doctrine, that we truly know a portion or portions 
of space, but do not know all of it; that we can 
think of, can know, a very great length of a radius, 
but can not conceive how far the radius extends, 
whether to a finite distance or an infinite. 

The presupposition upon which Mr. Spencer 
seems to go, as Bradley also, that we must know 
the totality of space to know any of it; or that as 
we do not know the whole we know nothing, is a 
very dubitable postulate. He has not thought it 
worth the least effort to justify this postulate; and 
we are under no obligation whatever to adopt it. It 
indeed appears gratuitous and baseless. This ques- 



Reality and Nature of Space. &1 

tion will urge itself upon every one : Why should 
not Mr. Spencer have held on to, as something 
truly known, the portion of space he could and 
did imagine, and let the outer space he could not 
imagine go in its infinity or its absolute finiteness 
as something not necessary to be known ? Or, why 
should he have felt himself compelled to surrender 
the possibility of the true cognition, or the reality 
as cognized, of the space which he assumed at start- 
ing and also spoke of as divisible, because he was 
unable to imagine how much space lay beyond it? 
It seems clear he gave up too easily. He still, in 
spite of this inability of the imagination, might have 
adhered firmly to the conceivable space initially 
presumed, as something really existing and truly 
cognized. He has not succeeded in the least in 
showing that our ignorance of the extreme range of 
the perfectly homogeneous space renders impossible 
a true cognition of a portion of it. 

There is, it must be granted, important truth in 
the principle that we "think in relations/' or that 
the fullness of our knowledge of a reality depends 
upon the fullness of our knowledge of its relations. 
It may be maintained that if we should know all the 
relations of an object, our knowledge of it would 
be perfect; and that if we had perfect knowledge 



22 Space and Time. 

of any one object, we would have knowledge of 
the universe.* But this principle has no manifest 
application to our knowledge of space so as to 
require us to admit that we can have no true knowl- 
edge of space unless we know the whole extent of 
it, whether finite or infinite ; or that if we know not 
the whole we know nothing of it ; or that our con- 
ceptions of relative portions of space are not true 
knowledges, but illusions, that our thought is but 
a subjective symbol of the unknowable and in no 
degree a true representation of the objective real. 
All the metaphysician proves by the fact that 
we can not think of space as, at the farthest, either 
finite or infinite, is just what everybody was and is 
quite ready to admit, namely, that we do not know 
the entire extent of space. But our ignorance of 
the extremes of space should not greatly embroil or 
vex us; for we seem to be left with a true knowl- 
edge of a finite space so great as to be absolutely 
sufficient for all our needs and concerns. We may 



* " The simplest individual perception is determined by 
potential relationship to everything else in the Universe. 
* * * I can not say 'this book' without a reference to sur- 
roundings, which are not to be restrained from extending over 
the entirety of space and of time." (Haldane, Pathway to 
Reality, I. 63.) 



Reauty and Nature: of Space. 23 

claim to know space as far out as the fixed stars, 
say as far as the star Sirius, which is said to be 
two hundred thousand times farther away from us 
than our sun. Possessing the knowledge of so vast 
a volume, we may rest in uncertainty, if it must 
be, as to the outermost reach of space. For meta- 
physicians, then, ceaselessly to trouble themselves 
about their inability to think of space either as 
coming to an end at some point beyond the visible 
stars or as having no end, and on account of that 
inability to ignore, make nothing of, or defame the 
immense sphere of space which we may assume to 
know, and to find no comfort or satisfaction in this 
knowledge, appears to be metaphysical wayward- 
ness. Some have wished that we might get rid 
altogether of, or, as they say, get "beyond," space, 
"beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampiness 
of the world surrounding us." But such a wish 
seems in some respects absurd. Surely all conceiv- 
able intelligent beings should find room enough in 
which to live and move and have their being, with 
no sense of discomfort from narrowness or confine- 
ment, in the prodigious sphere of space having a 
thinkable radius not less than the distance from us 
of the fixed stars. To lament on account of nar- 
rowness or crampiness is like a minnow complain- 



24 Space and Time. 

ing to Neptune that it had not enough of water 
to swim in, when it had the whole Atlantic and 
Pacific. It may be here noted as a curious phenom- 
enon that some metaphysicians, like Schopenhauer, 
have seemingly been half angry at space because it 
divided things from one another. 

The considerations which seem conclusive against 
Mr. Spencer's inference, that our knowledge of 
space is ignorance because we can not imagine space 
as either ending or endless, seem equally conclusive 
against the inferences of Mr. Bradley. The latter 
says that, since we can not reach the end of space, 
or must think of every space as having space beyond 
it, space therefore " passes away into the search for 
an illusory whole/' "it is a process of endless pass- 
ing beyond actuality," "it forever disappears," etc., 
and contradicts itself hopelessly. But these loose 
and wayward predications certainly afford no sup- 
port to the main conclusion. The near or interior 
space which our thought traverses in its search out- 
wards can not be said to "pass away," or pass 
"beyond actuality," or in anywise "disappear." On 
the contrary, it holds its place, it remains immovable 
and constant, and all the time definitely thinkable. 
For example, the space within the orbit of the moon 
does not pass away as thought pushes on to the 






Reality and Nature of Space. 25 

orbit of Mars and to the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, 
Uranus and Neptune, and yet farther and farther 
till it sinks exhausted without finding an end. All 
these interior spaces remain steadfast. Not an idler 
assertion can be made than that they "pass away" 
or "disappear." There is no assignable reason why 
they should not be constant, and why our knowl- 
edge and measurement of them should not be true, 
though it be forever unknowable to us what extent 
of space lies outside them. If there be truth in 
Mr. Bradley's questionable assumption, that "space 
to be space must have space outside itself," there 
can be no less truth in the assumption that space 
to be space must have space inside itself; and this 
inside, near space has its permanent existence, and 
can never be reasonably said to lose its existence — 
to be instable, transitory and vanishing — because 
we can conceive no end to the outer space. Like- 
wise our knowledge of the nearer spaces can not 
be justly said to be but "contradictory appearance" 
or ignorance. No cogent reason appears why we 
should not hold that our knowledge may be, and 
probably is, perfectly true to the reality of, for 
example, the spaces of the solar system to which 
we have referred. It seems a quite rational con- 
clusion that we should hold on firmly to what we 



26 Space and Time. 

can embrace of space, and what we can not embrace 
we should just let go and confess the limitations 
of our comprehension. 

The impossibility of conceiving space either as 
having an end or having no end proves neither that 
space nor our thought of space is self-contradic- 
tory. Space, it is certain, can not be both finite and 
infinite, yet it must be one of them, for they are 
direct opposites ; but it does not contradict itself, as 
by presuming to be both, or by claiming at one time 
to be one and at another time to be the other. There 
is in no way any real contradiction or inconsistency. 
Space gives a positive knowledge of a portion of 
itself, but forever conceals from us whether that 
portion is a part of ultimate finiteness or infinity. 
Metaphysicians are fantastical in imputing contra- 
diction to space for this reason. 

Nor is our thought of space self -contradictory 
or inconsistent and thereby demonstrating itself to 
be an untrue phenomenon. We easily perceive a 
large sphere of space without the least inconsistency 
in our cognition; but in our farthest perception of 
space we are halted by opposite impossibilities of 
thought. Yet there is surely no self-contradiction 
or self-delusion here. Our perception is by this 
shown to be not untrue or fictitious, but only weak. 



REALITY AND NATURE OF SPACE. 27 

Either space is too great for our faculty or our 
faculty too feeble for space ; or the utmost that can 
be said is, that space runs out too far for our per- 
ception to follow it. In this dilemma we clearly 
learn the finiteness of our thought; but to be finite 
is not necessarily to be erratic; to be able to know 
only a part is not to be doomed to illusion. 

After all the argumentative efforts of the agnos- 
tics with the fact of our inability to think of space 
as either infinite or absolutely finite, or to decide 
for one of these contradictory alternatives, we seem 
to be left in undisturbed possession of the clear and 
easy theory that we can know a part of space, but 
not all ; that our knowledge of space goes to a great 
depth and is true as far as it goes, but it does not 
go to the end. 

2. We move on to notice, in the second place, 
the reasoning of the idealists against the reality of 
space, or the reality of space as ordinarily thought 
of, based on consideration of the divisibility of 
space. Mr. Spencer says: "We find ourselves to- 
tally unable to form any mental image of unbounded 
Space; and yet totally unable to imagine bounds 
beyond which there is no Space. Similarly at the 
other extreme: it is impossible to think of a limit 
to the divisibility of Space; yet equally impossible 



28 Space and Time. 

to think of its infinite divisibility." * Here, then, 
we have a second set of " alternative impossibilities 
of thought/' which respects the internal division of 
space, and which is supposed also to require the con- 
clusion that space is "incomprehensible," that our 
knowledge of it is "total ignorance." Mr. Bradley 
remarks upon the divisibility of space : "Any space 
must consist of parts; and, if the parts are not 
spaces, the whole is not space. * * * Anything 
extended is a collection, a relation of extendeds, 
which again are relations of extendeds, and so on 
indefinitely. The terms are essential to the relation, 
and the terms do not exist. Searching without end, 
we never find anything more than relations ; and we 
see that we can not. Space is essentially a rela- 
tion of what vanishes into relations, which seek in 
vain for their terms. It is lengths of lengths of — 
nothing that we can find. * . * * Space vanishes 
internally [that is, by division] into relations be- 
tween units which never can exist." t Mr. Bradley 
here seems to assume that space is divisible into 
ultimate parts that are spaceless or are non-entities, 
and that therefore we have the result that space is 



* First Principles, p. 48. 

t Appearance and Reality, p. 37. 



Reality and Nature of Space. 29 

composed of spaceless parts ; which result, however, 
is a contradiction, for, as he says, "if the parts are 
not spaces, the whole is not space." Or we have 
the result, that space consists of mere abstract rela- 
tions, relations that have no terms to be related, or 
relations of units that never can be found, that 
never can exist. All terms have vanished or been 
reduced to nothing by division. He then again 
infers, in effect, that the only conclusion for us is, 
that space "has most evidently proved not to be 
real, but to be a contradictory appearance.' ' We 
have heard of dissecting to kill ; here is dividing to 
annihilate. In Mr. Bradley's argumentation there 
is implicated the traditional metaphysical assump- 
tion, that an extended thing can not be a unit, but 
must have parts, must be a composition, and must 
be divisible ; that only the unextended can be a unit 
or simple. 

But this whole reasoning of the idealists is a 
singular mixture of delusion and sophistry. They 
begin curiously with the most questionable assump- 
tion possible, namely, that space is composed of 
parts and is actually divisible into parts, and divis- 
ible, they appear to imply, by easy and familiar 
means. It must be admitted that they are quite 
right in presuming that the division of space is 



30 Space: and Tims. 

assertable, and, as far as that goes, thinkable; and 
that we can not reach to an infinite length, or to 
an absolute limit, in this thinkable or ideal division. 
But a more baseless assumption was never made 
by metaphysicians than that which these appear to 
make, namely, that there is a possible and easy real 
division of space answering to the ideal or predi- 
cate division; or, in other words, that as there is 
an assertable partition, there is and must be a pos- 
sible and actual partition of space. Now, in fact, 
not the slightest evidence is producible that space 
ever has been actually fractured or in anywise 
divided in any degree, or that it ever can be divided 
by any means whatsoever In all the past history 
of human accomplishment, there is no report of 
one instance of the least actual partition of space. 
Again, there is no evidence of any kind from all 
past existence of any sort of fracture of space 
having taken place. And at the present time who, 
of all men, knows of the possible division of space 
and of the means of effecting it; or who knows or 
can conceive of any disruptive force or union of 
such forces that can ever cause the least break in 
space ? 

It is important enough to be worthy of notice, 
that with the apparent actual indivisibility of space 



Reality and Nature of Space. 31 

there goes also the fact that division of any degree 
or into parts of any size is altogether unimagi- 
nable.* Not only are both the infinite division, and 
the absolutely limited division, of space unimagi- 
nable; but any division of space at all, any severance 
of contiguous parts, larger or smaller, maximal, 
medial or minimal, any severance of parts having 
no space or only nothingness between them, is 
wholly unimaginable. We can talk of the division 
of space, and know well what we are talking 
about, and be readily understood by others; but it 
is impossible for us to picture it. The sort of 
ideality that is implied in our language involves 
no power to image any kind of actual partition or 
diremption of space. The fact that we are thus 
unable to imagine a real division of space, and the 
absolute lack of evidence that any real division of 
it ever has taken or ever can take place, would 
seem to warrant the belief that such a division is 
an everlasting impossibility. 

Further, it is deserving of particular notice that 



* Locke has remarked: "The parts of pure space are in- 
separable one from the other; so that the continuity can not 
be separated, neither really nor mentally; for I demand of any 
one to remove any part of it from another, with which it is 
continued, even so much as in thought." (Essay, II. xiii. 13.) 



33 Space and Time. 

the fact that the limited and unlimited divisibility 
of space are both unimaginable, or are opposite 
impossibilities of thought, affords not any support 
or encouragement whatever for the assumption that 
yet one of them must be true, that space must be 
actually divisible either to a finite or to an infinite 
degree. Space is either finite or infinite in its total 
extension; but it is not either of finite or infinite 
actual divisibility. And the principle of Excluded 
Middle forces us to believe that one of the uncon- 
ceivable opposites respecting the total extension 
must be true; but there is no such compulsion upon 
us to believe that one of the inconceivable opposites 
respecting the division of space must be true. The 
impossibilities of thought, either single or contra- 
dictory, regarding the divisibility of space, together 
with our total ignorance of any instance of actual or 
possible division, surely do not favor the view that 
the division of space is possible, but rather favor 
the view that division to any distance is impossible. 
It appears certain that space is not divisible into 
any parts that are perceivable or imaginable, saying 
nothing of division into final parts that are exten- 
sionless or existenceless ; and it appears certain that 
as space can not be known as divisible into parts of 
any size, it can not be known as made up, or as a 



R^auty and Nature of Space;. 33 

collection, of parts, or as in anywise a composi- 
tion. Matter is divisible, and we have constant and 
unquestionable experience of dividing it; we can 
separate its parts and then can unite them ; but have 
absolutely no similar experience respecting space. 
Wholly unlike matter, space is not a compositum, 
but a to turn. Metaphysicians sometimes seem to 
affirm that the division of space into parts that are 
spaceless or non-entities — this "absolute complete- 
ness of division" — is a demand of reason. Facts 
warrant us in believing that it can be only a demand 
of fanciful and dogmatic idealism. 

The old and obstinate metaphysical postulate, 
that not any extended reality can be a unit, would 
seem to meet with a decisive refutation in the facts 
that, though the divisibility of space to any extent 
is predicable, yet any division is unimaginable, an 
instance of actual division is absolutely unknown, 
and the assumption of possible division is absolutely 
groundless. By these facts we seem to be required 
to maintain that space is an extended unit. And 
even if space should have only phenomenal exist- 
ence, it possesses both extension and unity. Appar- 
ent division of space into parts of any magnitude 
has never been experienced by any human mind. 
Space always appears as an extended unit. 

(3) 



34 Space and Time. 

There may be other extended and unitary enti- 
ties. The luminiferous ether, which is supposed 
to fill space, may be an entity of that character. 
Division of the ether is not known to be actual or 
possible ; and division may be impossible because of 
its essential unity. If the human mind is an ex- 
tended reality, why may it not be a unit ? Division 
is indeed predicable of the extended mind, as it is 
of space and every other extended thing; yet though 
predicable, and in that sense ideal, real division 
might be always impossible— the mind might still 
be actually an extended and indivisible unit. It may 
be said that each part "is in its own place"; still, 
because of indivisibility and simplicity, the whole, or 
the whole of consciousness, may be in each part. 

We come now to the most important point in 
our present theme, namely, the total falsity and 
worthlessness of the reasoning of metaphysicians 
from the ideal division of space to the unreality and 
incognizability of space. The possibilities, and the 
" alternative impossibilities/' of the ideal division 
of space determine nothing at all in regard to the 
reality and the cognizability of space. Why should 
the inability of our thought, respecting divisibility, 
prove anything more than the inability respecting 
the full extension of space (which, as we have seen, 



Reality and Nature of Space. 35 

proves nothing), for the doctrine of Spencer, that 
space is "incomprehensible" and our knowledge of 
it "total ignorance." Even if we can not imagine 
and decide how far space or a portion of it is divis- 
ible, or whether divisibility has a limit or no limit, 
why should it be inferred from this inability that 
space is incomprehensible? Why are we not per- 
fectly justifiable in the opposite inference, namely, 
that the assumed divisible space, while yet undi- 
vided, is comprehensible, that it really exists as we 
know it? And why should the incapability of our 
imagination prove that our knowledge is "total 
ignorance"? Why may we not maintain the con- 
trary doctrine, that our knowledge is a true knowl- 
edge, that space exists as we know it and we know 
it as it exists ? More reckless and sophistical argu- 
ment than that of Spencer on this subject is hard 
to conceive. But we are not left to a mere balance 
or equality of probabilities as to the reality and 
knowledge of space. In the incontestable fact that 
there is no known reason in the world for assuming 
the possibility of dividing space to any distance or 
into parts of any size, we are afforded unrestricted 
liberty, as far as the divisibility of space is con- 
cerned, to maintain that space is comprehensible, and 
that our knowledge is not ignorance, but truth. 



36 Space and Time. 

We may treat the reality and perception of space 
without any regard whatever to the question of its 
divisibility. In fact, to introduce this question is a 
disturbing and mischievous interpolation. 

The same fatal defect and error characterize 
Mr. Bradley's teaching. He says : "Any space must 
consist of parts ; and, if the parts are not spaces, the 
whole is not space. * * * Anything extended 
is a collection/' etc. He supposes that space, by 
division, "vanishes internally into relations between 
units which never can exist" — which are unex- 
tended; is a sum of abstract relations, in which 
there are no units or elements related ; is composed 
of parts that are not spaces; and concludes that 
space is evidently not real, but only a contradic- 
tory appearance, or a something which vanishes into 
nothing. This is surely an example of the most 
illogical deduction. No reasoning could be more 
unreasonable. The fruitful source of all this evil is 
the initial assumption, that a space must consist of 
parts and must be divisible. We need not dwell 
further on the total emptiness and baselessness of 
this assumption. Not the least proof can be drawn 
from any source whatever that space ever has been 
or can be divided into parts of any magnitude, or 
into final parts of no magnitude. All conclusions, 



Reality and Nature of Space. 37 

therefore, drawn from the assumption — as that 
space is a collection of parts, that it vanishes into a 
system of void relations, that it is a whole made up 
of parts that are not spaces, that it is a fictitious or 
contradictory appearance, or is now something and 
now nothing — are as baseless as itself. Space does 
not contradict itself, but only the metaphysician's 
thinking. Not space, but only the partition that is 
supposed to cause it to vanish, is unreal. And even 
if the division of space into spaceless or non-exist- 
ing parts were possible in anywise ideally, this could 
not in the least prove that it is possible actually, 
and that space is therefore found at last to be com- 
posed of the unreal or " absorbed in a non-spatial 
consummation/' 

Further, as already noted, there is not the same 
necessity upon us to decide that one of the opposite 
impossibilities of thought respecting the division of 
space is true, as that one of the opposite impossi- 
bilities of thought respecting the extension of space 
is true. The extension of space must be either finite 
or infinite. Though either of these mutual contra- 
dictories is unthinkable, we know that one must be 
true, because we possess a positive knowledge of a 
relative volume of space ; that is, we have something 
to begin with. But the divisibility of space must 



38 Space and Time. 

not be either finite or infinite. There is no neces- 
sity, there is no reason of any kind, for choosing 
either of the unthinkable alternatives about division ; 
because we have no knowledge whatever of the 
actual or possible division of space to any degree, 
or we have nothing to begin with; and this total 
lack of knowledge warrants the conclusion that 
division to any distance is impossible. This is an 
instance where of opposite impossibilities of thought 
neither must be true to reality, or where there is 
no real compulsion to accept either. Both may be 
equally and always untrue. 

The attempt of philosophers to prove the contra- 
diction and unreality of space, and the inconsistency 
and fictitiousness of our thought of space, from 
the two cases of opposite impossibilities of thought, 
namely, the one respecting the extension, the other 
respecting the division of space, constitutes a strange 
chapter in metaphysical speculation. Neither set of 
the opposite impossibilities nor both combined afford 
the least support to the conclusions drawn from 
them. Why should these opposite impossibilities of 
our ideality be supposed to settle anything decisively 
as to the consistency of actuality and knowledge? 
A fair consideration of the facts of experience cause 
such general statements as the following from Brad- 



Reauty and Nature of Space. 39 

ley to appear quite capricious and absurd: "The 
infinity of Nature, its extension beyond all limits, we 
might call Nature's effort to end itself as Nature. 
It shows in this its ideality, its instability and tran- 
sitoriness, and its constant passage of itself into 
that which transcends it. In its isolation as a 
phenomenon Nature is both finite and infinite, and 
so proclaims itself untrue.' ' * Space "made an 
effort to find and to maintain a solid self-existence, 
but that effort led it away into the infinite process 
both on the inside [by division] and externally." f 
"Space can not come to a final limit, either within 
itself or on the outside. And yet, so long as it 
remains something always passing away, internally 
or beyond itself, it is not space at all." % 

Not the slightest evidence is brought that space 
or nature ever in any degree passes away either 
externally or internally, or has any disposition to do 
so. All the evidence we have, all the experience, all 
the phenomena, point to the opposite conclusion of 
solidity and permanence. We cognize an immense 
volume of space, but we find ourselves incapable of 
comprehending all of it, we can not reach out to 
its extreme regions by any length and strength of 



: Appearance and Reality, p. 292. f IK P- 222 - t lb** P- 36 



40 Space and Time. 

effort. But only sophistical verbosity can affirm 
that, because we can not know the maximum exten- 
sion of space, our knowledge of the great sphere 
which we do know is not true knowledge, and that 
space is instable, transitory, always passing away. 
Space does not pass away externally, and as cer- 
tainly, even more certainly, it does not pass away 
internally by division. Beyond dispute, one of the 
greatest blunders of modern metaphysics is the tacit 
and confident assumption that as the division of 
space is predicable, it is and must be possible and 
actual. Nothing is more certain to us than that 
there is no known instance of the real division of 
space, and no known possibility of division under 
any conditions. The possibilities and impossibilities 
of our ideality respecting both the outward expan- 
sion and the internal division of space can establish 
nothing at all against either the reality of space as 
an actual indivisible and indeterminately extended 
entity or the true knowledge of a great volume of it. 

There is little in the teachings of Spencer and 
Bradley, and of many others, concerning the nature 
of space that is not found before in Kant's discus- 
sions of the " Transcendental ^Esthetic" and the 
"Antinomy of Pure Reason." Kant vigorously 



Rsauty and Nature of Space:. 41 

affirms the ideality of space, denying it existence as 
a thing-in-itself, or as something outside and inde- 
pendent of the mind. He contends that it is a pure 
subjective form of our sensibility and is nothing 
apart from it. The following statements declare his 
position : " Space represents no property of things 
in themselves/' "Space is nothing else than the 
form of all phenomena of external sense, i. e. } the 
subjective condition of sensibility, under which 
alone external perception is possible to us." "It is 
nothing so soon as we leave out the condition of 
the possibility of experience, and take it as some- 
thing that belongs to the constitution of things in 
themselves."* "Space, with time, and all phe- 
nomena in both, are not in themselves things. They 
are nothing but representations, and can not exist 
outside our mind." f Space is not a property of 
things in themselves, of the mind or of anything 
outside the mind ; it is in no wise a copy of any of 
them. It is but a subjective a priori form of sense, 
having phenomenal extension, but not real exten- 
sion. It does not arise from experience, but precedes 
and conditions experience. It "lies ready a priori 
in the mind," % an original form of sensibility. 

* Kritik der reinen Verniinft (Hartenstein), p. 61, p. 63. 
t lb., p. 347. t lb., p. 56. 



42 Space) and Tims. 

Under the term Space Kant includes both Space 
and Extension, that is, both what is commonly 
called pure space or space in itself, and that quality 
of objects by which they fill space, namely, their 
extension. He does not expressly note this dis- 
tinction between the terms, nor use them with this 
discrimination; but it would have added much to 
the general intelligibility of his discussion if he had 
done so.* 

Kant supports the ideality of space on two main 
grounds ; of which the first is the necessity and 
universality of our judgments respecting space and 
of geometrical propositions. He remarks specific- 
ally, that we must think of space as tri-dimensional, 
that we can not think space away, that we can not 
think a limit to it, or must always think of space 
as having space beyond. He notes the necessity and 
universality of the geometrical proposition, that two 
straight lines can not inclose a space. Kant con- 



* Locke long before acutely and wisely suggested that, 
"to. avoid confusion in discourses concerning this matter, it 
were possibly to be wished that the name extension were 
applied only to matter, or the distance of the extremities of 
particular bodies-, and the term expansion to space in general, 
with or without solid matter possessing it, so as to say space 
is expanded and body extended." (Essay, II. xiii. 27.) 



Rkauty and Nature; of Space. 43 

tends that the necessity and involved universality of 
these judgments prove that they are not empirical ; 
for experience can never give necessary and uni- 
versal cognitions;* but are synthetic judgments 
a priori, arising from the internal constitution of the 
mind. And space, therefore, as being the object of 
necessary and universal judgments, must be some- 
thing in the mind, a form of intuition provided 
wholly from within the mind itself. It can not be 
something possessing absolute existence, existence 
outside and independent of the mind, and known by 
experiential or a posteriori knowledge; since such 
knowledge can not afford necessary and universal 
judgments. 

Kant's tangled, sometimes over-subtile, and ver- 
bose, reasoning upon the necessity and universality 
of spatial judgments seems far from conclusive; but 
we shall not enter upon a minute criticism of it. 
The necessity of geometrical propositions appears to 
be involved in their simplicity. We hope to show, 
in the chapter on the Cognition of Space, particu- 
larly, that the compulsion on our thought regarding 
the extension of space is not an a priori, but rather 
an empirical, necessity. 



* Kritik d. r. V. s p. 75. 



44 Space and Time. 

The second main support of the doctrine of the 
ideality of space Kant finds in the inconsistent judg- 
ments of reason respecting the extension and the 
divisibility or simplicity of space. He asserts the 
"contradictions of the general cognitions of rea- 
son/' * the conflicts of the "transcendental ideas/' 
the "fourfold antinomy." The first of these con- 
flicts or antinomies concerns the extension of time 
and space. Kant charges that reason here equally 
favors directly opposite propositions, which are en- 
titled thesis and antithesis; and that, in favoring 
such propositions, reason reveals its self-contradic- 
toriness. The opposite propositions, as respects 
space, are these: (Thesis) "The world is limited 
in regard to space." (Antithesis) "The world is 
not limited in regard to space, but is infinite/' f 
Kant argues that in asserting with like positiveness 
these propositions, which, as being direct opposites, 
can not both be true, reason falls into a "contra- 
diction" or into a "natural antithetic"; there is 
"disunion in reason," "it finds itself hemmed in by 
contradictory judgments." He imputes to reason 
here also a "striving to extend its domain beyond 
the limits of experience." t But the main and final 



*Kritik d. r. V., p. 301. fib., p. 304. t lb., p. 330. 



Reality and Nature of Space. 45 

conclusion is, that this self-contradiction of reason 
is the result of treating space as a thing-in-itself ; 
not as a phenomenon in the mind, but as something 
subsisting in itself apart from the mind and dis- 
covered by experience. The "fallacy" lies in this 
initial "supposition." * The fact that reason finds 
the antithetical propositions equally valid, shows 
that the dispute is about "nothing" or a "tran- 
scendental illusion." f 

It seems certain that Kant does not report the 
facts of reason's conduct in this instance truly. The 
charge of self-contradiction and disunion of reason, 
and of its attempting to extend its dominion beyond 
the range of experience, and the conclusion to the 
necessary ideality of space, have all their basis in 
his false report. The facts appear to be these : 
Reason finds itself capable of comprehending a very 
great volume of space, a volume extending out, we 
may hold, to the fixed stars. In this comprehension 
reason is in no conflict with itself, but in perfect 
harmony. But in its very great and enlarging per- 
ception of space, reason is halted by a dilemma : 
it finds itself unable to perceive, imagine or tell 
whether space is at last finite or infinite. Yet in 



* Kritik d. r. V., p. 356. f lb., p. 353. 



46 Space and Time. 

this predicament it does not fall into self-contradic- 
tion or disunion. It does not contradict itself by 
declaring that both of the opposite alternatives are 
true, which they can not be. It does not strive to 
extend its dominion beyond the realm of possible 
experience by deciding for either of them. It just 
discovers its own weakness or the limits of its cog- 
nitive power. It finds that space is too great to 
be comprehended by it, that space extends too far 
for its perception to follow. Reason, then, may be 
charged with weakness, but not with self-contradic- 
tion or self-conflict ; in its weakness or the limitation 
of its perception, it always preserves self-consistency 
and self-harmony. If, however, reason thus does 
not and can not treat the opposite alternatives with 
equal positive favor and in this wise contradict 
itself, yet in a manner it does show equal favor to 
them; not equal positive favor, but, if we may so 
speak, equal negative favor ; that is, it acknowledges 
its equal inability to decide for either of them or 
for either against the other. 

Further, according to this view of the facts, 
reason is not liable to the accusation of making a 
pretentious effort to extend its dominion beyond the 
limits of possible experience by deciding for both 
the inconceivable opposites or by deciding on behalf 






Reality and Nature of Space. 47 

of either. But though it can not go beyond expe- 
rience by deciding pretentiously, or modestly and 
rightly, for either finiteness or infinity, yet it does 
go a step beyond experience, and that rightly; for 
though it can not apprehend which of the opposites 
is true, it yet knows this much or this little — it 
knows that one of them must be true. 

Let us now consider the bearing of what seem 
to be the real facts in the case upon Kant's main 
conclusion, namely, that space is a subjective form 
of intuition and not a reality subsisting outside the 
mind and known by empirical representation. They 
afford apparently not the slightest sure support to 
the Kantian postulate of ideality. They are in no 
wise inconsistent with the contrary hypothesis, that 
space is an objective reality independent of our 
mind. The fact that reason can not positively de- 
cide for either of the direct opposites, finiteness or 
infinity, most certainly involves no opposition to the 
reality of the space that is embraced within the wide 
circle of our actual perception. It leaves room with 
perfect ease and consistency for the simple theory, 
that space is a reality too great for our perception. 
There is evident not the least contradiction either 
in space or in our thought. Only a relative portion 
of space is known to us, not all; and reason is 



48 Space and Time. 

strong and self-consistent to a certain extent of 
knowledge, but then becomes impotent. There is 
apparent no force of opposition to the reality of the 
relative sphere of space known to reason, and to 
the rectitude and trustworthiness of reason as far 
as it has strength to go. There is surely no justi- 
fication for saying that the relative space we know 
is " nothing" or a "transcendental illusion." But, 
finally, who can successfully maintain any such pos- 
tulate as, that there should not and can not be a 
reality so great as to surpass the perceptive power 
of man; or as to bring or suggest to the mind 
antithetic impossibilities of thought respecting its 
extension; or as to convince reason at length of 
impotency? Who can prove that a part is not real 
because the great whole is not entirely compre- 
hended ; or that the inability of reason to ascertain 
whether a reality at its farthest extension is finite 
or infinite is ground for accusing it of self-contra- 
diction and disunion? 

In Kant's treatment of the second "Antinomy/' 
which concerns itself with the divisibility and sim- 
plicity of things, he seems partial to the view 
that every extended thing must be composite and 
divisible, that no extended thing can be indivisible 
and unitary or simple. He appears to hold that 



Reality and Nature oe Space. 49 

space is capable of a division to infinity or to 
nothing, like that of matter as stated in the fol- 
lowing: "A complete partition, by which the real 
in matter vanishes either into nothing, or into 
that which is not matter, namely, the simple 
[unextended]." * 

Matter, we all know, is divisible, although no 
one knows how far. But to liken space to matter 
as being divisible, or to affirm that space is to any 
extent divisible under any conditions, or that it is 
composed of parts, is without the slightest warrant 
in the universal experience of space. 

We will not repeat the argument and con- 
demnation already pronounced against Spencer and 
Bradley, the close followers of Kant, on account of 
their affirmation of the divisibility of space. They 
fell into the ditch; but they were led by Kant. 
Their briefer statements of the situation have an 
advantage. By the ditch we mean particularly the 
wholly unjustifiable assumption, that there is an 
actual divisibility of space corresponding to, or 
beside, the commonly asserted ideal divisibility. 

Kant was deeply concerned with the question, 
" whether nothing but the divisible and transitory 



* Kritik d. r. V., p. 297. 
(O 



50 Spacb and Time. 

exists/' * "whether anything in the world is simple 
or whether everything must be divisible to infin- 
ity." f Space seems to be entitled to answer for 
itself: that it is divisible neither to an infinite nor 
to a finite extent; that it is simple; and as perma- 
nent as anything else, if not more so. The total 
lack of evidence that space is really divisible into 
parts of any magnitude should go for proof that 
it is not so divisible, and is not composed of parts. 
This lack warrants the assumption that space, un- 
like matter, is an extended unit or an extended 
simple reality. In space there seem to be combined 
extension, indivisibility, unity or simplicity, and 
permanence. 

3. Another leading argument against the exist- 
ence and knowableness of the realistic space is, that 
it has no attributes, and for that reason is incapable 
of asserting its existence, or of acting on us and 
thereby making its existence known. Many contend 
that to exist is to act. Mr. Spencer holds that, on 
the hypothesis of "objectivity," it is on this account 
impossible to represent space in thought as an 
entity. "To be conceived at all," he observes, "a 
thing must be conceived as having attributes. We 



*Rritik d. r. V., p. 331. fib., p. 341, 



Reauty and Nature of Space:. 51 

can distinguish something from nothing only by the 
power which the something has to act on our con- 
sciousness ; the several affections it produces on our 
consciousness (or else the hypothetical cause of 
them) we attribute to it, and call its attributes; and 
the absence of these attributes is the absence of the 
terms in which the something is conceived, and 
involves the absence of conception.' ' * Undeniably 
there is some cogency in this reasoning. 

But we are not under the necessity of refusing 
every sort of attribute to objective space. It cer- 
tainly has permanency. It has extension. Some, 
however, have vigorously opposed especially the 
propriety of ascribing extension to space. For 
instance, Mr. Spencer says, that to credit space with 
this " implies a confusion of thought. For exten- 
sion and Space are convertible terms : by extension, 
as we ascribe it to surrounding objects, we mean 
occupancy of Space; and thus to say that Space is 
extended, is to say that Space occupies Space." f 

It is undoubtedly important generally to distin- 
guish space and extension, meaning by the former 
empty space, and by the latter the attribute of sub- 
stances by which they fill space. Many discussions 



* First Principles,, pp. 47, 48. f lb., p. 48. 



52 Space and Time. 

of the nature and our cognition of space, as, for 
example, that of Kant, would have been much 
clarified by careful regard of this distinction. But 
in the discussion of the attributes of space itself, the 
distinction, it must be admitted, has little pertinency ; 
for space and its extension are identical. Space is 
tri-dimensional extension or emptiness; and we are 
really incapable of saying what it is more than this. 
We are therefore compelled to admit that it seems 
preferable to say that extension is space than that 
it is an attribute of space. To affirm that space is 
extended is really but to say that space is space. 
So be it. In fact, space can not be defined except 
only by itself. There is nothing in existence simpler 
than space by which or by comparison with which 
it can be made more intelligible. Hence there is 
never any real need for any man's attempting to 
define space for the benefit of others, since no 
definition can make it plainer than it already is to 
every mind. 

Notwithstanding, there may yet be more reason 
for saying that extension is an attribute of space 
than at first appears or is commonly admitted. Is 
there absolutely empty space? We generally sup- 
pose there is, or may be; but is it a fact? Space 
contains the atmosphere, and we suppose also the 



Reality and Nature of Space. 53 

ether conceived as immeasurably more extended. 
Who can tell whether it does, or does not, contain 
other diffused non-spiritual entities ? We may carry 
our inquiry yet farther : Does space contain, or is 
it contained and constituted by, the extended unitary 
and indivisible spirit of God? 

Whatever may be said of extension, there is a 
very important quality belonging to matter which 
certainly appears absolutely lacking to space, namely, 
force or activity. Space never moves, or acts, or 
resists. It never has a share in any interaction. 
Therefore the question may be well asked : If space 
is entirely forceless or inactive, how can it ever 
affect us and thus reveal its existence to us, how 
can we have any ground at all for affirming its 
existence ? 

This formidable difficulty seems to be met and 
perfectly dissolved by the principle, that we come 
to know empty space by means of filled space, that 
emptiness is primitively an inference from a pre- 
viously known filling or extended substance which 
has gotten away.* Here may be fitly noticed a 



* The like view is thus pointedly advocated by Professor 
Croom Robertson, Elements of Psychology, p. 109: "His- 
torically, genetically, we apprehend Body as resisting before 
we apprehend Space as extended. We come to Space by the 
evacuation of Body rather than to Body by the filling in of 
Space." 



54 Space and Time. 

remark of Mr. Bradley: " Empty space — space 
without some quality (visual or muscular) which 
in itself is more than spatial — is an unreal abstrac- 
tion. It can not be said to exist, for the reason 
that it can not by itself have any meaning. When 
a man realizes what he has got in it, he finds that 
always he has a quality which is more than exten- 
sion. But, if so, how this quality is to stand to the 
extension is an insoluble problem." * This doc- 
trine is on a line with the following well-known 
utterances of Berkeley : " I desire any one to reflect 
and try whether he can, by any abstraction of 
thought, conceive the extension and motion of a 
body without all other sensible qualities. For my 
own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power 
to frame an idea of a body extended and moved, 
but I must withal give it some colour or other sen- 
sible quality which is acknowledged to exist only in 
the mind. In short, extension, figure and motion, 
abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceiv- 
able. Where, therefore, the other sensible qualities 
are, there must these be also, to-wit, in the mind 
and nowhere else." f 

It is indisputable that we have no image nor 



* Appearance and Reality, p. 38. f Principles, X. 



Reality and Nature of Space. 55 

any sort of thought of pure and abstract space or 
extension, before and independently of the thought 
of extension that is more than extension, i. e., of 
extension associated with some sensational quality, 
as color. And it is probably true that we never 
become able in any length of experience to image 
space or extension with every sensible or secondary 
quality abstracted. But these facts do not justify 
the conclusion that we can not treat or think of 
space as without sensational quality or as empty 
of everything, and that such space is an " unreal 
abstraction/' Pure empty space is reached by thor- 
oughly logical inference; it is an object of true 
knowledge; it is a real and not an "unreal" abstrac- 
tion. But we shall not attempt here to treat this 
subject with minuteness; for this would carry us 
too far into the question of the process of our cog- 
nizing space, and that question we wish to reserve 
for separate consideration. Now we are mainly 
concerned with the nature of realistic space, or with 
the self-consistency of space and of our thought 
of it. 

Our first and fundamental knowledge of exten- 
sion is in the consciousness of extended sensation. 
There is certainly not an original knowledge of 
extension or space before or apart from sensation of 



56 Space and Time. 

some quality. We have not an a priori or primitive 
abstract knowledge of space. Our first knowledge 
of extension is of the extension of sensation. It is 
our first knowledge of filled space. The first filling 
for us is sensation, and it is indispensable. And 
this knowledge is fundamental. It is the necessary 
ground of all our knowledge of external exten- 
sion, of all extension filled and empty outside and 
apart from the region of our sensations. The first 
known external extension is the extension of mate- 
rial objects directly impressing us. We infer the 
extension of the external objects by means of the 
extension of the sensations they excite in us. The 
internal sensation is a sign and representation of 
the external extension. Thus, on the basis of the 
internal extension we cognize the external. It seems 
possible to prove, against the Berkeleian idealism, 
that this is entirely legitimate reasoning and that 
the result is knowledge true to actuality. From 
the knowledge of external extended bodies or filled 
extension we go on to the knowledge of empty 
extension or space. Many and varied experiences 
of losing objects from the embraces of our organs, 
as by being snatched or being dropped from the 
grasp of the hand, lead to the inference of the empty 
spaces left by the objects. Our organs, previously 



REALITY AND NATURE OF SPACE). 57 

resisted by the objects, can close within the vacant 
places, and thereby come to prompt the inference of 
the existence of the vacant places. We miss the 
filling, and infer emptiness. We know space not by 
its own force or resistance, but by the absence of 
previously known resisting bodies. Thus without 
miracle or mystery we may attain, by repetition and 
composition of experiences, to the clear cognition 
of the contrast between filled extension and empty 
extension. This reasoning seems to be logical, and 
to warrant the judgment that it is an unjustifiable 
assumption of great moment to declare empty space, 
as thus knowable and known, to be an unreal or 
impossible abstraction. Such space may not be pic- 
turable or imaginable, apart from secondary quality, 
but it is yet truly thinkable; and there seems to be 
no sufficient reason why we may not continue, if 
we care to do so, to hold it really to exist, in its 
absolute inactivity, as it is thought to be. 

This view of the cognition of the reality of 
empty space is not contradicted by any character- 
istics of our thought of space; as, for instance, by 
the peculiar necessity pertaining to it. This neces- 
sity, as our inability to imagine an end to space and 
divisions or vacancies within space, is apparently 
easily explicable by the ordinary powers and logical 



58 Space and Time. 

processes of our mind as these have just been in 
part described, without requiring us to assume an 
extraordinary innate or creative function, or a priori 
determination, in mind, or requiring us to yield in 
the least degree to the dogmatism that insists that 
empty space must be unreal or only a phantom or 
abstraction of thought. 

4. Some have argued against the reality of 
objective space — against space considered as an 
entity external to and independent of the mind — 
on the ground that this is to introduce duality into 
fundamental existence, or to contradict "the neces- 
sary unity of the basal reality/' It requires, they 
say, that God should be extended; but it is impos- 
sible for God to be extended, for if he be extended 
he can not be a unit, since " nothing possessing 
volume in space can be a unit." Or it requires, that 
space should be a reality co-eternal with a spaceless 
God. 

Metaphysicians have been too long and too gen- 
erally dominated by the dogmatic hypothesis, that 
unity is impossible to an extended reality; and 
frightened or offended at the imputation of exten- 
sion to the Supreme Being. But whatever may be 
the relation of God to space, or of space to God, it 
is not necessary for us to discuss or have regard for 



! 



Reality and Nature: of Space. 59 

this relation in considering the reality and nature 
of space. We may conduct this consideration and 
come to trustworthy conclusions without being 
obliged to treat of that relation. It is important to 
observe and to maintain this position; for one of 
the greatest errors, and a necessary one, of idealistic 
monism is looking at space and other realities from 
the supposed point of view of the divine mind, 
and depreciating and ignoring, if not defaming, the 
point of view of the human mind. This is a nec- 
essary error, for it proceeds inevitably from the 
primary assumption of the identity of the divine 
and human minds. 

We may consider space from our human po- 
sition, or its relation to the human mind and of 
the human mind to it, without necessarily taking 
account of the relation of God to space. We may 
take account of this relation or we may not, just 
as we choose or our ends call for ; but may reach 
truthful results as to the nature of space and our 
relation to it, without taking account of it. The 
relation of God to space is, no doubt, an important 
subject of metaphysical philosophy: nevertheless, 
we must maintain that, with all its importance, it 
should not dominate our study of the nature of 
space and human relation to space, and determine 



60 Space and Time. 

and prescribe the conclusions. Because space is as 
near to us in knowledge as God is, and our knowl- 
edge of it is not less direct and certain than of 
him. It may be contended that our knowledge of 
space is more direct and certain, and therefore must 
not be made dependent upon the knowledge of 
God. We might then even hold as an implication 
of these principles, for instance, that if our human 
knowledge of space involves the inference that God 
is extended, the inference is probably true. We 
can not, on the contrary, be logically and justly 
compelled to reason in the opposite direction and 
conclude that, as we think of space, God is space- 
less, and space must be. unreal, or of very inferior 
reality, or only a fictitious appearance. We should 
hold on to the reality of space and the truthfulness 
of our earlier and nearer knowledge of it, let the 
ulterior results be what they may. What we know 
first and immediately must not be made to agree 
with what we know last and by the farthest deduc- 
tions; rather, the latter knowledge should agree 
with the former. Idealists pursue the opposite 
course with respect to space and everything spatial 
and temporal. Their method tends to remove us 
from the true foundations and beginnings of our 



Reality and Nature of Space. 61 

knowledge, and to reduce the science of ontology 
to chaos. We must not, indeed, deny the truth in 
the words of Professor James, that " philosophy is 
essentially the vision of things from above"; * but 
we must not deny the equally important truth, that 
the vision of things from above must preserve 
consistency with the vision of things from below. 
But if there is, as there certainly seems to be, a 
real duality between the human mind and space, 
we are not logically bound to hold to a real or the 
like duality between God and space. Alan exists in 
space and is entirely dependent upon it. Space is 
absolutely independent of him and his thought for 
its origin and continuance. This he well knows. 
He may move hither and thither, but space in all 
its parts abides constant, unchangeable. He can not 
divide it or affect it in any way. He can not move 
it or move it away actually; he can not even think 
it away. It holds its place persistently and invin- 
cibly against him and his thought. We are under 
no logical necessity of maintaining a like depend- 
ence and inability of God. We may legitimately 
believe that space is entirely dependent upon him 



* A Pluralistic Universe, p. 277. 



62 Space and Time. 

for its origin, and entirely dependent upon his im- 
mediate and constant support for its continuance, 
God may be said to be in space, not as dependent 
and uncreative man is, but as having given space 
existence and as by his omnipresence eternally 
sustaining it. 



CHAPTER II. 
OUR COGNITION OF SPACE. 

In the preceding chapter, devoted to the consid- 
eration of the Reality and Nature of Space, we have 
found that the most notable arguments employed 
against the self-consistency and reality of space are 
so singularly errant and indecisive that, as far as 
they are concerned, we are left entirely free to 
maintain the ordinary view that space is not a 
self-contradictory phenomenon, but a self-consistent 
reality — a real extended unitary, permanent, inac- 
tive, empty entity, of indeterminate extent. We 
now proceed to consider the question, how we come 
to a knowledge of this reality, or whether there 
is an actual and trustworthy process of cognizing 
an external space so defined. Something has been 
already said in the former chapter upon the process 
of knowledge, because of the difficulty, arising from 
the close relation of knowledge and reality, of treat- 
ing of either entirely apart from the other. What 
is real for us must in some way be known by us. 
A thing is real for us because it is known. 

It is now maintained by many psychologists, 



64 Space; and Time;. 

and, as it appears, rightly, that we have no original 
abstract or a priori knowledge of space, or innate 
knowledge preceding or independent of experience; 
but that we attain to a knowledge of space only by 
means of our sensations or sense-experience. An 
important question arises here, and indeed the most 
important question pertaining to the cognition of 
space, namely, Is our first knowledge of space or 
extension attained by means of sensations that are 
in themselves unextended; or by means of sensa- 
tions that are in themselves really extended, that 
possess extension as an original attribute? Many 
psychologists vehemently argue for the former alter- 
native; a less number as vehemently argue for the 
latter. 

Some psychologists impute what they call "vo- 
luminousness " or "extensity" to sensations, partic- 
ularly to the tactual and retinal; and treat it as an 
element of importance in the cognition of spatial 
extension. But their "extensity" is in many cases 
of an equivocal and uncertain character.* They 



* Mr. F. H. Bradley says : "What has been called ' exten- 
sity ' appears to me in the main to consist in confusion. When 
you know what you mean by it, it seems to turn out to be 
either spatial at once and downright, or else not spatial at 
all. It is useful, in short, only as long as you allow it to be 
obscure." {Appearance and Reality, p. 35.) 



Our Cognition of Space. 65 

will not admit that it is real extension or in itself 
involves the consciousness of real extension; and 
hold that other, namely, motor sensations must be 
incorporated with it in order that there may be 
the perception of extension. The cardinal question, 
how motor sensations, if they are to be regarded 
as in themselves unextended, or as constituting a 
pure time series without any extension, can cause 
the conjectured "extensity" to appear as extended, 
is too frequently left in dense fog or ignored. 

A larger number of psychologists have made 
no mention or use of "extensity" ; and have ex- 
pressly denied that sensations of any sense are 
really extended or afford in themselves alone the 
consciousness of real extension. They contend that 
extension or the thought of it is the result of a 
creative synthesis or fusion of different sorts of 
unextended sensations, of surface sensations with 
motor sensations — those of muscle, joint and ten- 
don — or with feelings of central innervation. The 
spatial order in both touch and sight, says Wundt, 
"is developed from the combination of certain sen- 
sation components which, taken separately, have no 
spatial attributes whatever." * It is sometimes said 



* Psychology (Judd tr.), p. 142. 
(5) 



66 Space and Time. 

in general: "We make space in the knowing of it. 
We know it in the making of it." 

The hypothesis of genetic synthesis and trans- 
formation as variously advocated, especially by Ger- 
man and English psychologists, seems to be of the 
most unsatisfactory and delusive character. For 
example, it is taught that a series of sensations on 
the tactual surface excited by the movement of a 
finger-tip over the surface is made into a spatial 
series by means of or by fusion with the motor 
sensations of the hand or arm that attend the move- 
ment of the finger. The tactual series is held to 
be composed of sensations originally different in 
quality and thereby constituting a series of "local- 
signs." But though different in quality, the tactual 
sensations are, it is distinctly said, not at all known 
in themselves as forming a spatial series, or as sep- 
arated by intervals of space. Likewise the muscular 
or motor sensations accompanying the motion of 
the limb are not known originally or by themselves 
as a spatial series, but only as a pure time series 
without any spatial property. Then by combination 
the qualitatively different and purely successive sen- 
sations are transformed into or caused to appear as 
a spatial series; "sequent positions" are made into 
spatially separated positions, sequence into exten- 



Our Cognition of Space:. 67 

sion. The process amounts to a creation of the 
extended out of the unextended, of difference of 
space out of difference of quality and of time. 

But it seems impossible to admit that there can 
be thus a development or genesis of spatial order 
from pure qualitative and temporal order. The 
fusion of the spaceless elements is no sufficient rea- 
son for the generation or appearance of the spatial. 
It is arbitrary presumption to impute such an effect 
to such a cause. The proper conclusion would seem 
to be that, as only spaceless components go into the 
fusion, only a spaceless product can come out ; that 
a union of pure time series of sensations can only 
result in a composite pure time series ; that if spatial 
separation and extension are found in such a union 
it can only be by unconscious surreption. 

In the rise of the spatial series from the tem- 
poral much importance is imputed by some to the 
reversibility or " double-sided reproduction" of the 
temporal series. But it appears altogether fanciful 
to suppose that reversion or any mode of reproduc- 
tion of originally pure time series can be of moment 
in the genesis of the spatial. For the reversion of 
a pure time series is still a pure time series, it has 
yet absolutely nothing of the spatial in it, and can 
not carry us a hair's breadth towards the production 



68 Space; and Time. 

of the spatial. In the direct and reversed sequences 
there is nothing but the union of the two modes of 
pure sequence. The two fill twice the time filled by 
one, but they can produce no spatial extension or 
the thought of it. If the spatial enters it can do so 
only stealthily amidst the multiplicity and variety 
of experiences of the direct and reversed sequences. 
It should be observed that in their accounts of 
the genesis of the spatial, psychologists differ as 
to the relative importance they assign, on the one 
hand, to the qualitatively different surface sensa- 
tions, and, on the other, to the motor sensations 
(the muscular, articular). Qualitative differences 
of surface sensations, as the tactual, are generally 
admitted to occur, and that, too, even within very 
narrow circles; and they may be properly called 
" local-signs," if this term does not serve as a 
means of bringing in surreptitiously spatial place 
and extension.* Now some psychologists, in the 
explanation of the perception of difference of place 
and motion, reckon very great importance to qual- 



* Though the word local-sign, which was introduced into 
the discussion of space-perception by Lotze, may have, its 
proper use, I have avoided it ; because of its varied and uncer- 
tain applications, and especially because, as employed by many 
writers, it is a smuggler, and is well-compounded for the office. 



Our Cognition of Space. 69 

ity-differences, even deeming them almost or quite 
sufficient in themselves. They say that "if two 
excited points awaken identical qualities of sensa- 
tions, they necessarily appear to the mind as one/' 
or that "if two sensations are not distinguished as 
to quality, they are not localized apart" "Quali- 
tative shadings are transformed into spatial series." 
This doctrine is quite extreme and not sustained by 
experience. While quality-discrimination and place- 
discrimination are in the closest union in many 
instances, there is no certainty that the former 
occurs with the latter in all cases, or that the latter 
can not occur where there is identity of quality 
or occur independently where there is diversity. 
Again, the unlikeness between quality-difference and 
place-difference is so wide and marked that there 
appears no real ground for assuming that the 
knowledge of the former begets or is indispensable 
to that of the latter, or that there can be a causal 
connection. Quality-difference is probably no more 
necessary to the perception of an interval of space 
than to the perception of an interval of time. The 
utmost we seem to have warrant at present for 
asserting is, that quality-difference has importance 
in rendering the spatial consciousness more acute, 
more definite and vivid; but not in generating the 



70 Space and Time. 

spatial consciousness. Difference of quality and 
difference of space appear to be two original facts 
of experience, radically and eternally unlike; and 
neither can be said to be derived from the other, 
or to be necessary to the other. 

Other psychologists assign the principal func- 
tion in the genesis of the spatial consciousness to 
the muscular sensations accompanying the move- 
ment of our organs. It is said that a temporal 
series of muscular sensations constitutes a spatial 
distance. "The experiences from which the con- 
sciousness of space arises are experiences of force 
[muscular sensations]."* These sensations are 
sometimes called "movement," "active movement." 
"To account for the spatial order we must have 
active movement as of the eyes or hands." Some 
assert, in other words, that muscular sensations give 
massiveness, or are themselves spatial in character. 

But the muscular hypothesis is liable to the 
gravest objections. In the first place, it seems 
impossible, for example in the case of the move- 
ment of a finger-tip over a tract of the cutaneous 
surface, that sensations up in the arm attending the 
movement should involve or give an original knowl- 



* Spencer, First Principles, p. 165. 



Our Cognition of Space. 71 

edge of the places touched, of their distances, and 
of the path traversed by the finger-tip. How can 
they cognize distances and movements that are so 
far away from themselves? The muscular and 
articular sensations may originally reveal their own 
places and their extension within their own seats; 
but how can they originally know distances and 
movements when they are not spatially present to 
them, when they are so far absent? It seems a 
clear impossibility. 

Again, the muscular sensations accompanying 
movement are generally assumed to be and to be 
known originally as a pure time-series. Then we 
have the capital problem, how does the time-series 
become a space-series, how are "sequent positions" 
transformed into spatial positions, or time into 
space? The answer of the devotees of the mus- 
cular sense is in most cases a prodigy of surreption 
and paralogism; or their dependence is upon the 
secrecies of magic. A series of muscular sensations 
which is, or which is known as, originally a pure 
time-series, and occurs with a succession of two 
tactual sensations aroused at separate points by two 
contacts of a finger-tip, can not be rightly supposed 
to cause the tactual sensations, which in themselves 
are known only as purely successive, to be, or to 



72 Spacs and Tims. 

be known as, apart in space. A time-series can not 
reveal or impart what it originally entirely lacks; 
or receive from another what it originally entirely 
lacks. We have a pure time-series of motor sen- 
sations intervening between two tactual sensations. 
Now the intervening series may well measure the 
time interval between the tactual sensations, but it 
can not create or cause to appear a space interval 
between them. It is incredible that out of experience 
of pure sequence there should arise so different a 
notion as that of separation in space. 

Spatial extension is surely as original as time, 
and our knowledge of it as early and original as 
that of time. The two experiences are always most 
intimately associated ; but it has never been demon- 
strated that the spatial is derived from the tempo- 
ral. We must hold to the general conclusion, that 
difference of quality, difference of time, and differ- 
ence of space are three distinct original differences. 
Known usually in the closest relations of each with 
the others, they are yet radically diverse. Not one 
is derived from either or both of the others. 

The illogicalness and fatal shortcomings of the 
spatial theory of creative synthesis or genesis of the 
extended from the unextended seem, from the above 
considerations and the like, to be indisputable, and 



Our Cognition of Space. 73 

I shall therefore not pursue the discussion of it 
further; but prefer to turn now to the examination 
of the alternative theory already mentioned. And 
I may excuse myself from further discussion of the 
genetic theories, because I have already treated of 
them with some minuteness and fullness in previous 
publications. 

We have remarked that the chief question re- 
garding the perception of extension or space is 
whether our sensations, which are the indispensable 
means of perception, are in themselves originally 
extended or unextended. The apparent entire fail- 
ure of those who, holding that the sensations are 
all originally unextended, have attempted to account 
for the knowledge, or for both the origin and the 
knowledge, of extension by means of a creative 
association of different kinds of unextended sensa- 
tions, or genetic process, may well induce us to con- 
sider the cognitive theory and success of those who 
begin with the postulate that the sensations, espe- 
cially the cutaneous and retinal, are in themselves 
really extended, possess extension as an original 
property, and as such are primitive elements of 
knowledge. 

It seems necessary to admit the truth of the 



74 Space and Time. 

basal postulate, that some at least of the sensations, 
particularly those first concerned in spatial percep- 
tion, possess extension as an original, underived 
property. The consciousness of extended sensations 
can not be proved to be anything else than a pri- 
mary fact of experience. It is original and unique. 
It appears to be as early, as original and as sure 
as the cognition of pure temporal sequence. And 
the primitive consciousness of the extension of sen- 
sation is not merely of a mongrel or uncertain 
"extensity," but of real, unequivocal extension. It 
is true that our first experiences of sense-extension 
are vague and indefinite as to outlines and internal 
points and distances, but they are yet of genuine 
extension ; and experiences grow rapidly in definite- 
ness and clearness by repetitions, increase of variety 
and memory. Further, there is original conscious- 
ness, not only of linear and superficial, but also of 
trinal extension. We are conscious of trinality or 
voluminousness in the head, and in limbs and parts 
as they are embraced and compressed.* 



* " The sensations derived from the inward organs are 
also distinctly more or less voluminous. Repletion and empti- 
ness, suffocation, palpitation, headache, are examples of this, 
and certainly not less spatial is the consciousness we have of 
our general bodily condition in nausea, fever, heavy drowsi- 
ness, and fatigue. Our entire cubic content seems then sen- 
sibly manifest to us as such." (James, Psychology, II. 135.) 



Our Cognition of Space. 75 

Our first cognitions of extension are then of 
the extension of sensations. There is no preceding 
a priori knowledge of abstract extension, or knowl- 
edge of extension which is the extension of nothing ; 
but our first knowledge is of extension which has 
sensation as content. The primary condition of 
knowing that a sensation is extended is its own 
actual extension. There is no a priori or innate 
idea or form, unless the actual and original exten- 
sion of sensation, or of consciousness, or of mind, 
should be called such a form. 

The earliest perceptions of extension are of the 
tactual sensations. They are at first at least the 
most frequent and most prominent. The tactual 
surface is from the beginning fully exposed and 
ready for impressions or irritations. Two sensa- 
tions in any portion of this surface are known as 
spatially apart, by means of intervening sensibility 
aroused by pressure of an extended object or by 
radiation of the stimulation that excited the two 
sensations. But we do not suppose it is impossible 
for two sensations to be known as two and as 
spatially severed if they are not connected by inter- 
vening clear feeling. Qualitative differences no 
doubt aid in the perception of the numerical and 
spatial differences of sensations; but they are not 



76 Space and Time. 

essential or indispensable; and probably they are 
generally not as strong as is sometimes assumed. 
The one indispensable condition of our cognizing 
two sensations as apart in space is that they shall 
actually be apart in space. The ultimate ground of 
the experience is, we may presume, that the sen- 
sitive principle itself is an extended and indivisible 
unit. Because of this character it is capable of con- 
tinuous sensation, when, on account of the atomicity 
of the physical organ, the excitation is discontinu- 
ous; and capable of embracing in one momentary 
knowledge separate sensations. Two sensations 
excited in the palm of the hand by a pair of com- 
passes and known as apart, are the punctual expe- 
riences of a unitary extended consciousness. They 
may be compared to two candle flames in day- 
light, or to two brilliant points in an illuminated 
surface; and nothing more than the condition of 
their separation would seem to be required for the 
perception of them as two and as apart, even if 
they had no discernible qualitative difference. Such 
difference has importance, as above remarked, in 
rendering the spatial consciousness sharper, more 
vivid and definite; but not in creating it. 

On the fundamental postulate that extension or 
" voluminousness " is an original property of sen- 



Our Cognition of Space. 77 

sation, Professor W. James seems to maintain that 
two stimulated points of a sensitive surface are 
originally known as apart in space, by means of 
sensation or feeling — a positively extensive whole — 
which fills the interval between the two points and 
which is awakened by the irradiation of the stimu- 
lation of the points.* But he gives an importance 
to the difference in quality of the feelings of the 
two points, or to the " local-signs, " which, on the 
theory of the extended awakened feeling of the 
whole tract that embraces the points, is uncalled for. 
He says that two sensations identical in quality can 
not be known as two ; and of course, then, they can 
not be known as apart in space. "The twoness of 
the points comes from the contrast of their local- 
signs." f But it seems more reasonable to maintain 
that two punctual sensations, tactual or retinal, are 
known as apart in space, primarily, because they 
are apart in space and the interval between them is 
filled with aroused feeling, and not because they 
differ in quality. Difference in quality has its only 
or chief importance, not in causing the conscious- 
ness of duality and spatial severance, but in making, 
by contrast, the consciousness more exact and vivid 



* Psychology, II. pp. 153, 159. f lb., II. p. 159. 



78 Space and Time. 

and in helping the clear discrimination of widely 
separated localities. The sensations are parted and 
known as so by the actually extended intervening 
feeling. They are bright spots in a conscious sense- 
expanse, and might be known as two if absolutely 
alike. The knowledge of them as two and as 
apart is involved in the knowledge of the extensive 
unitary sensation within which they stand. If we 
are conscious of extended feeling, why should we 
not be conscious of two separate sensations within 
the sphere of that feeling, even if they be the same 
in quality? The reckoning of so much importance 
to differences of quality is too closely allied to the 
sophistical hypothesis, that difference of place in 
space, or extension, is generated from sensational 
difference of quality or of time or of both, and that 
there is not extended sensation to begin with. 

By the comparison, union and memory of va- 
riously extended, limited and situated sensations 
(all being within the body), the mind comes grad- 
ually to a knowledge of the whole sphere of exten- 
sive sensation as a unity. The primitive vagueness 
and indefiniteness grow to clearness and precision. 
Qualitative differences give help. Underlying all 
is the unity of the mind and consciousness. The 
one mind holds together all its extended sensations 



Our Cognition of Space:. 79 

occurring in separate corporeal limbs and parts and 
gives spatial unity to them. All their distinctions 
of place are unified as being embraced by the one 
mind. Further, in the development to clearness 
of the tactual experiences, by repetitions, growing 
multiplicity and comparisons, the mind comes to 
what may be called the knowledge of absolute 
extension and the possession of an absolute stand- 
ard. Different regions of the tactual surface differ 
greatly, no doubt, in fineness of sensibility, so that 
two impressions must be much farther apart on one 
tract than on another to be discerned as two; but 
this fact does not interfere with or make impossible 
a fair uniformity of estimate of those distances 
between points that are long enough to be per- 
ceived at both the acuter and duller parts, and of 
all tactual distances. 

It may be observed, by the way, that some psy- 
chologists apparently assume implicitly that, if there 
be original apprehension of positions in space and 
distances by the tactile sense, the apprehension 
should be perfect in exactness, vividness, and com- 
prehensiveness from the very beginning; and that 
there should be no development from vagueness and 
indefiniteness by means of repetition and practice, 
associated sensations and perceptions, etc. This is 



80 Space and Time. 

one of those singular presuppositions by which 
psychologists sometimes gratuitously increase the 
intricacy and difficulty of problems and increase 
their own labors. Time is required for the mind 
to become fully awakened out of its original pro- 
found unconsciousness — to become vividly sensible 
of itself, its constitutional attributes, its potentiali- 
ties. Development in exactness and clearness of 
perception of tactile places and extensions is the 
progressive awakening of consciousness. It is a 
growing familiarity with sensations and their posi- 
tions; an increase in the holdings and tenacity of 
memory; a confirmation and establishment of asso- 
ciations and relations. Discrimination of places by 
touch progresses from obscurity and vagueness to 
clearness and precision especially because placing a 
sensation consists largely in relating it to other 
tactual sensations present and remembered. A soli- 
tary primitive punctual sensation may be compared 
to a man trying to find his place in a strange and 
dark space into which he has been carried while 
asleep. To know the place of a tactual sensation 
is to know its spatial relations to others. But this 
requires multiplicity of experiences, and some devel- 
opment of the tenacity of memory and power of 
comparison, and therefore requires time. These 



Our Cognition of Space:. 81 

provisions are requisite also because the mind has 
no aid from actual a priori or inherited knowledge ; 
although it is very probably helped by inherited 
tendencies or dispositions. We may note further 
that as time is necessary to come to clear conscious- 
ness of the place and relations of a tactual sensa- 
tion, so time is necessary for a sensation to loosen 
itself from its original place and relations. This 
is exemplified by what occurs with the Taliacotian 
operation, in which a flap of skin is turned down 
from the forehead in order to form an artificial 
nose. For a while sensations excited in the piece 
of skin in its new position are felt as if in the old 
position on the forehead. This probably results 
from the overpowering influence of their old asso- 
ciations, which continue for some time or until the 
new relations are well formed. 

We have been hitherto concerned mainly with 
the perception of positions and extensions of our 
sensibility, especially the tactual sensibility. These 
are within the confines of the body. Now we pro- 
ceed to consider the difficult and very important 
question, how perception goes beyond the body or 
tactual horizon and apprehends the outside exten- 
sions and spaces from the small to the great. The 
problem is double: to understand how we perceive 

(6) 



82 Space and Time. 

extension that is both beyond the corporeal bound- 
ary and empty — empty of sensation and every 
apparent content. 

Already we have accepted the principle that, 
because of its entire inactivity, pure space can not 
be known to us directly, but only indirectly, medi- 
ately, by means of active or resisting objects that 
occupy it. It is then obvious that the question of the 
cognition of external extended objects or occupied 
space should have precedence to the question of the 
cognition of external unoccupied space. 

How we come to know external extended ob- 
jects is too important a question pertaining to the 
present subject to be passed over or entirely post- 
poned; but here we shall treat it with as much 
brevity as possible, desiring to reserve a more 
particular and full discussion for a future occasion. 

The leap of perception from the cognition of the 
extension of the internal sensation, the first exten- 
sion we know, to the cognition of the extension of 
external reality, unquestionably constitutes one of 
the most important epochs in our progressive knowl- 
edge. A fundamental condition is the previous 
experience of the mutual pressings and compress- 
ings of our bodily organs. When one organ, as 
the hand, embraces another, we have experience of 



Our Cognition of Space:. 83 

double effort, or of effort and resistance, and of 
double extended touch. This is experience of re- 
ciprocal causation and extended sensations wholly 
within the sense or mental sphere. Afterwards, 
when the organ happens to strike or grasp an 
external object, and we have experience of only 
single effort and single extended touch, we are 
therein prompted to the inference of an extended 
resisting object that is not one of our organs, but 
is outside the bounds of our sensation and will. 
We infer that the resisting object is external, on 
the ground or suggestion of the preceding expe- 
rience of reciprocally external sensations; and that 
it is extended, because of the extended sensation it 
excites in the grasping organ. If the object excited 
not extended, but only unextended, sensation, we 
could not conclude that it w r as extended. The 
unextended would be no medium for inferring the 
extended. Inferring the extended from the unex- 
tended would be impossible. We may hold in 
general that if there were no real and known sen- 
sation-extension, we could never perceive or even 
dream of extended reality outside and beyond. 

By such contrasted experiences repeated, multi- 
plied and memorized, our perception is gradually 
induced fearlessly to make the marvelous leap from 



84 Space and Time. 

the ground of extension within the sphere of sen- 
sation to extension beyond it and the periphery. 
This, the first move in our perception of outside 
extension, is also by far the most difficult and im- 
portant. When it once has been made, there does 
not seem to remain any very formidable obstacle to 
the progress of our perception to the great exten- 
sions and immense volume of space we come at 
length to know. I am not unaware how strongly 
and scornfully adverse are idealists to any such 
theory of perception of external objects as that here 
imperfectly outlined; but I beg their permission to 
uphold the theory notwithstanding. 

If we may attain in such a manner as here 
described to the perception of external occupied 
space, by what course do we reach the cognition of 
external empty space ? The course has already been 
indicated in the preceding chapter. It is a process 
of inference; but it is not an intricate and obscure 
process, and does not require minute and prolonged 
consideration. We infer empty rooms from the 
escape of extended objects out of our grasp. We 
first come to a degree of familiarity with external 
filled spaces or objects. By the repeated escape of 
objects from our hold and the contractions of our 



Our Cognition of Space. 85 

organs, we infer the existence of the empty and 
unresisting spaces which the objects filled. The 
inference at first slow and vague, becomes easy, 
quick and clear ; and we acquire as much familiarity 
with empty space as with occupied space. 

But in our discussion of the perception of exter- 
nal extension filled and empty, we have not got 
beyond small and near, tangible objects and the 
nearest space. The serious problem yet remains, 
how are we able to cognize objects of great exten- 
sions and great distances, and space of remote and 
immeasurable expansion? This perception of near 
space may be the true beginning of what enlarges 
at length to a clear knowledge of a vast volume of 
space with its unity, continuity, homogeneity, and 
necessity; yet we still have to ascertain the means 
and mode of the enlargement. 

The chief means are the muscular and visual 
senses; — the muscular sensations accompanying the 
movements of the locomotive organs, the arms and 
legs, and the retinal and muscular sensations of the 
eye; — both these senses operating, however, upon 
the tactual sense as a basis. By the tactual sense 
alone we acquire no cognitions of extensions beyond 
the corporeal superficies; but by the cooperation of 



86 Space; and Time. 

especially the muscular and visual senses with the 
tactual, we apprehend all the external extensions, 
distances and motions we ever come to know. 

The muscular sensations occurring with the 
movements of the arms and legs advance our knowl- 
edge of external magnitudes and space considerably 
beyond the corporeal boundaries. The muscular 
horizon, so to speak, is much wider than the tactual. 
But the muscular sense does not attain this knowl- 
edge by its own original faculty of perceiving 
movement and extension. It does not know of itself 
the motion which excites it and which its temporal 
serial feelings accompany. We have already con- 
tended, and continue to contend, that the muscular 
sense has no original capability of perceiving dis- 
tances and extensions away from the muscles in 
which it is resident. The capability is altogether 
an acquisition, and an acquisition made at first by 
association especially with the tactual sense. By 
this association muscular sensations become able to 
serve as signs, tokens, of distant movements and 
extensions. This service is our cognition by the 
muscular sensations of the movements and exten- 
sions. Other motor sensations, those of joint and 
tendon, are generally united with the muscular in 
the cognitions. 



Our Cognition otf Space. 87 

When a finger-tip is moved, in the motion of 
the arm, over a tract of skin, the muscular sensa- 
tions up in the arm, occurring with the motion of 
the arm, are associated with the tactual sensibility 
aroused by the transition of the finger. By this as- 
sociation they acquire the ability to indicate the 
tactual extension traversed. They are aided in the 
acquisition by the sensation at the end of the finger. 
Thus, primitively, muscular sensations become ca- 
pable of acting as signs of tactile extensions which 
are known originally and independently by the tac- 
tile sense itself ; and thereby acquire a power which 
serves as if it were an original endowment. On 
this theory we may contend that the advocates of 
the muscular hypothesis of the cognition and pro- 
duction of spatial extension just reverse the order 
of nature. Instead of touch cognizing extension 
from the muscular sense, the muscular sense cog- 
nizes, by the tuition of touch, extension originally 
known to touch. 

The muscular sense improves and greatly en- 
larges its acquired power. 1. It first repays its 
indebtedness to touch by helping touch to a more 
exact, definite and clearly comprehensive localiza- 
tion and measurement of its sensations, extensions 
and distances. It is an important factor in our first 



88 Space and Time. 

cognitions of empty spaces from touchable objects 
near to and impressing the superficies. 2. The 
muscular sense improves its acquired power by the 
attainment of a finer discrimination of places and 
extensions than that possessed by touch. For in- 
stance, it can discern places on the superficies which 
are too near one another to be discriminated by 
touch. If the fine point of any instrument, as a 
pencil, held by the fingers, be moved over the skin, 
we distinguish places which are too close to be 
distinguished if they be impressed simultaneously by 
a non-moving body. This finer ability for spatial 
discrimination possessed by the muscular sense has, 
however, been thought by many to afford strong 
proof that the muscular sense does not borrow from 
the tactual, but is rather itself, by its own original 
endowment, the leading sense. This conclusion is 
not warranted. The muscular sense improves on 
touch, by means of its original fine sensitiveness to 
changes in time or to the succession of the terms 
of its own serial experience. Its sensitiveness to 
changes of feeling in time is finer and clearer than 
touch's sensitiveness to differences of place. In the 
movement of the pointed instrument the muscular 
sense cognizes change of time, when touch does not 



Our Cognition of Space. 89 

cognize change of place. By this original faculty 
for time, then, the muscular sense can divide spaces 
which it originally learned to measure from touch, 
but which touch itself does not divide because of 
its dullness. The series of sensations of movement 
which become a measure or sign of the least dis- 
tance perceptible by touch, or the minimum tangible, 
on any portion of the skin, can be divided, and a 
part of the series can become the measure or sign 
of a part of the minimum tangible. In other words, 
the superiority of the muscular sense to the tactual 
in delicacy of spatial discernment is its superiority 
to the latter sense in the minute division of the 
extensions which were originally known to the 
tactual, and which the muscular sense, by asso- 
ciation, learned from it. 

3. The muscular sense of the arms and legs 
improves on touch by its apprehension of larger 
extensions. Having acquired by association with 
touch the knowledge of movement and a standard 
of measurement, it becomes able in the free motions 
of the organs to reveal spatial magnitudes far 
greater than the tactual experiences, and than could 
ever be known by the tactual sense alone. A certain 
duration of muscular sensation indicates a certain 



90 Space and Time. 

extension (as a tactual) or space; a continuance 
of sensation indicates a continuance of space or a 
larger space. 

4. It should be observed that, because of our 
habitual dependence on the muscular sensations of 
movement in the perception of extensions and 
spaces, injury of the muscles, or derangement of 
the muscular sensibility, causes notable mistakes and 
illusions in spatial cognition. 

The main agency for our largest perception of 
space is the visual sense. The horizon of the visual 
sense is vastly wider than that of the muscular sense 
of the locomotive organs. By it we penetrate into 
the abysses of space, immeasurably farther than 
any other sense or senses can carry us. Yet it is to 
be remarked that the visual sense has no original 
perception of depth and solidity. It has original 
knowledge of only linear and superficial extension, 
in its retinal sensibility. And also the muscular 
sensations of the eye, like the muscular sensations 
of other moving organs, afford in themselves, origi- 
nally, no knowledge of distant extension of any 
dimension. The eye acquires the power to perceive 
the third dimension and solidity by its retinal and 
motor sensations, primarily through association of 
them with touch and the muscular sensibility and 



Our Cognition of Space. 91 

movements of the arms, legs and body. The visual 
sensations, retinal and muscular, thereby become 
signs of extensions and spaces cognized by these 
other senses. But sight attains to an astonishing 
development and use of this acquired power, and 
also of its own original power. It perceives much 
finer, more exact and definite extensions and im- 
measurably greater space than ever could be cog- 
nized by touch and by all motor sensations other 
than its own. First, it repays its obligations to 
touch by aiding touch to more exact and precise 
cognition of its own places, extensions and totality. 
There can be no doubt of the assistance given to 
touch, and also to the motor sensibility of the arms, 
by the visual image or chart of the body.* But 
further, and in general, vision has a notable faculty 



* The experiences of persons born blind confirm the Berk- 
eleian doctrine that touch is not dependent on vision for its 
first knowledge of the superficies. Such persons acquire ap- 
parently clear notions of locality on the body. Helmholtz says 
that "the sense of touch is sufficient, as experiments upon 
persons born blind have proved, to develop complete notions 
of space." (Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (Atkin- 
son), I Series, p. 271.) It remains true, however, that, while 
vision does not have an original knowledge of the outlines 
and of particular spots of the skin, and does not lead touch 
to that knowledge, yet vision just as certainly helps to perfect 
the knowledge. 



92 Space: and Time. 

of using its own sensations as signs of the tactual, 
and of the corporeal movements; and of forming 
representations of great extensions and spaces, by- 
forming representations of great combinations and 
associations of tactual and motor experiences. A 
certain width of its retinal sensation, and duration 
of its muscular, represent an extension known by 
other senses; a greater width and longer contin- 
uance of sensations indicate an extension vastly 
greater than could ever be cognized by other senses 
alone.* 

But the fact should be noted that, notwith- 
standing the great superiority of sight in spatial 
perception, it ever remains subject to important 
control by touch. For instance, (1) sight always 
measures by the standard of touch (the real and 
true standard because of the immediate impression 
of objects upon the cutaneous surface) ;. (2) it per- 
ceives objects erect (as they are to touch), although 



*We presume yet that the retinal sensations possess ex- 
tension in two dimensions as an original property. These 
original small extensions become easily by association repre- 
sentatives and signs of the much larger tactual and muscular 
magnitudes and measurements. But also, because of the ex- 
treme fineness of the retinal spatial sensibility, we are aided 
to much more acute and minute spatial perceptions than we 
would ever be capable of by touch alone. 



Our Cognition of Space). 93 

the retinal images are inverted; (3) it perceives 
things as single (as they are to touch) from double 
images, and things as the same from distorted 
images; (4) it perceives an approaching object as 
one and constant, although the retinal image is con- 
tinually increasing in size; and near and remote 
objects, for example, a line of receding columns, 
as the same in size (as they are to touch and also 
as they appear when viewed successively from 
like proximity), although the retinal images are 
considerably different. 

We began and have continued our discussion on 
the postulate, that spatial extension precedes and is 
quite independent of our cognition of it ; that we do 
not "make space in the knowing of it," but know 
space already made. Many metaphysicians in our 
day have much to say of space as an "ideal con- 
struction/' This doctrine is accepted by some as if 
it were a part of the larger Kantian principle, that 
the understanding or intellect makes nature. 

If we reject every such hypothesis, we must yet 
assuredly admit that our idea of space is a con- 
struction. It is a gradual formation by association 
and composition of our present and remembered 
experiences of extension by the different senses ; 



94 Space and Time. 

resulting in our complete perception of space as 
a continuous, homogeneous, unitary, inert, empty 
room of indefinite extent. The progressive forma- 
tion is properly called the synthetic functioning of 
the intellect. But there is no creative association 
or synthesis in the production of our idea of space. 
There is no combination of the non-spatial into the 
idea of the spatial. The primitive, original materials 
combined and synthesized are themselves extended, 
are our actually extended sensations. The element- 
ary extended materials are abstracted, associated 
and combined by the cooperation of the senses, the 
tactual, motor, aural, visual, or by the analytic and 
synthetic operation of the intellect, into our com- 
plete idea of space. The function of the intellect 
is then wholly that of abstraction, association and 
synthesis, and not of genesis. The intellect adds 
nothing original to the original extended experiences 
or experiences of extension. It only combines them 
into a unitary idea of a great space. It could no 
more construct the idea of space out of unextended 
elements than a builder could construct a house out 
of unextended stone, brick and boards. If exten- 
sion were not an original property of sensation, and 
therefore an original element of knowledge, there 
is no sufficient reason for believing that the idea 



Our Cognition of Space:. 95 

of space would ever exist. Our cognizing space, 
therefore, is not the constructing of an idea out of 
the non-spatial; but is rather a gradual fashioning 
of our internal complex idea, possessing original 
extension, into correspondence with the external 
reality. It is a progression to completeness of rep- 
resentation. Our idea of space is finished to the 
degree of its conformity to the real outer space. 

Our full knowledge of spatial extension we 
have been treating somewhat as one comprehensive 
knowledge. It should be remarked with explicitness 
that our whole knowledge of extension and space is 
a union of two very different kinds of knowledge, 
namely, immediate and mediate knowledge ; and one 
of the most important duties of the epistemology 
of extension and space is to note and thoroughly 
distinguish these divisions of the total complete 
knowledge. 

What seems to be one of the gravest faults of 
modern epistemology is the failure properly to 
discriminate and divide the sphere of immediate 
knowledge from the sphere of mediate knowledge, 
or what we know immediately from what we know 
by inference, or what is within consciousness from 
what is outside. The words knowledge, conscious- 
ness, experience, and other leading terms, are fre- 



96 Space and Time. 

quently used without needful qualification in this 
regard. To illustrate briefly: A man's knowledge 
of his own experience is certainly different from 
his knowledge of another man's experience. The 
former is immediate; the latter is deductive. The 
difference is so important as to demand full and 
precise distinction; but it does not often get it. 

The knowledge of spatial extension, as just ob- 
served, is part immediate, and part mediate. The 
former is very limited; the latter is of immense 
expansion. We have immediate knowledge of the 
extension of sensation and the sensation-volume. 
This immediately known extension is wholly within 
the bodily periphery, because sensation, conscious- 
ness, or mind, is so inclosed. Mind makes no 
excursions during life beyond the bodily superficies ; 
and can have no immediate knowledge of anything 
beyond; yet we must not entirely ignore some sin- 
gular perceptual telepathic phenomena. The imme- 
diately known extension is therefore very restricted. 
It does not include even the extension of the closely 
related nervous organs or their molecular motions, 
or of the end-corpuscles or the cells of the dermis 
and epidermis. The child and the illiterate person 
long have clear knowledge of sensations, without 



Our Cognition of Space. 97 

the faintest knowledge or conception of the related 
extended nervous elements and their vibrations. As 
respects consciousness or immediate knowledge, the 
psychical and physical are separated by a marked 
partition. 

But our directly known spatial extension, though 
so narrow, is yet of the greatest importance. It is 
the brilliant nucleus of all perceivable outer exten- 
sion and space. It is known with perfect certainty ; 
for in it knowledge and reality are identical or 
indivisible, consciousness itself is extended; and on 
that account it is the secure and indispensable basis 
for all our knowledge of wider extension, which is 
acquired mediately or inferentially through it. Our 
knowledge of the external is a leap of inference 
from this original and sure ground. On this certain 
foundation we build safely an immense superstruct- 
ure of inferential and representative knowledge. It 
is then as much as said here, that we know external 
space without being really conscious of it. In truth, 
all we are conscious of, strictly speaking, is the 
internal complex picture, the pure mental inference 
and representation. Nevertheless, our extensive rep- 
resentative knowledge of the external is a genuine 
and trustworthy knowledge, because of the nature 



(7) 



98 Space; and Time. 

and certainty of its foundation; and, for the same 
reason, our immediate and mediate knowledges 
combine into one true knowledge. 

There is a characteristic of our knowledge of 
space which we had occasion to consider in the pre- 
ceding chapter and which here requires attention 
again, namely, its necessity. We can not think of 
an end to space ; we are compelled to think of every 
perceived space as having space beyond. As was 
remarked, and as is well known, many have held 
that this peculiar property proves that our knowl- 
edge of space is a priori or entirely "nativistic." 
Some have imputed it to invariable association of 
ideas. We have here to answer the important ques- 
tion, how this undeniable necessity arises, or is 
consistent, with such a process of pure empirical 
cognition of space as that described above. 

We must hold that the first experiences of spa- 
tial extension are obscure, hazy, lacking certainly 
in distinctness and precision as to outlines, contour, 
periphery, bounding surface; and at first there is 
not a felt tendency or necessity to think of every 
space as having space outside of it. Younger chil- 
dren do not experience such an impulse. Distinct 
and definite thought of limits, bounds, surface, is a 
growth out of the primitive vague consciousness 



Our Cognition of Space;. 99 

and perceptions of extensions ; and the tendency to 
think of space as external to the confines of any 
perceived space has a corresponding growth, and 
only comes to full force with the development 
especially of the thought of bounds or contour to 
clearness and distinctness. 

This development goes on and completes itself 
simply by the repetition, multiplication and com- 
parison of experiences of extension and space; by 
the successive perceptions of wider and wider 
space. By repetitions and successively wider percep- 
tions, thought becomes fixed more on the different 
contours and receding bounds, and these become 
more and more distinct. And the tendency to think 
of space yet exterior to every perceived space has a 
corresponding development in strength ; and becomes 
at length irresistible. The force of the tendency 
is in the distinctly perceived contours, or bounding 
surfaces, so to speak. These looking outwards of 
themselves call for, demand, really assume, outlying 
and surrounding space. There appears, then, no 
need of resorting to an a priori law or necessity, 
or to invariable association. The necessity is in 
the perceived contour or boundary, the outward- 
facing surface or convex periphery, which of itself 
demands outer space as a counterpart, which forces 



100 Space and Time. 

thought beyond itself to contiguous ulterior space 
that was not before known. There must be some 
length of experience of objects varying in magni- 
tude and figure and of successive advances in dis- 
covering space beyond each wider known space ; and 
the latter experience is no doubt invariable; but it 
need not be very long to produce the strong tend- 
ency in thought to pass beyond every perceivable 
sphere, even the greatest imaginable or thinkable 
sphere or horizon, of space. To know the bounds 
of any extension is already to have passed those 
bounds, to have passed them by the compulsion that 
is in the bounds themselves. 

Before closing this chapter we wish to notice a 
principle respecting the cognition of space advocated 
by some metaphysicians of the sect called pragma- 
tists. These maintain the doctrine that the intellect 
makes space; but go a step beyond it towards the 
purest idealism or subjectivism. They say, in sub- 
stance, not only that the intellect makes space, but 
also that it makes it from its own purpose or for its 
own chosen utilitarian end. The intellect does not 
act from mere spontaneity, or because of external 
excitation and direction; but from its own internal 
original antecedent purpose or aim. The intellect 
is in this manner active, but in no degree passive. 
For example, it is said space is made to facilitate a 



Our Cognition of Space:. 101 

man's intercourse with his fellow beings. It is held 
that space is a human conception relative to human 
faculties and purposes, and not "valid beyond 
them"; and that it is right to speak of space as an 
independent form of reality "for every-day prac- 
tical purposes." Space is thus conceived as more 
thoroughly, or as entirely, an internal and purposed 
production. 

The pragmatist doctrine bewilders us by its 
strange contradiction of most of our experience of 
extension and space. Nothing can be less purposive 
than our earlier and chief perceptions of space. We 
have no consciousness of making space, and more 
certainly no consciousness of making it with or 
for a purpose. Instead of making space for a pur- 
pose, we unquestionably make our purposes with the 
conviction generally that they must be conditioned 
upon, or conformed to, space as a reality already 
existing, and existing without the slightest pro- 
ductive and purposive effort of ours. Therefore, 
instead of our wants or purposes determining space, 
space determines our purposes. The pragmatists 
reverse the true order of facts. 

Yet it can not be denied that some of our spatial 
conceptions may be called "ideal constructions" for 
"practical purposes." This is true of geometrical 
quantities. For example, the geometrical straight 



102 Space and Time. 

line may be said to be an " ideal construction," or 
to be made by the intellect; and to be made because 
of the great practical uses of such a line in the 
mathematical work of science. The line of our 
ordinary unpurposive perception is of three dimen- 
sions — length, breadth and thickness — and more or 
less crooked. Induced by the apparent advantages 
and necessities of science, or by the interests of life, 
the intellect constructs from this real line the ideal 
geometrical line. It abstracts the length from the 
breadth and depth of the perceived real line, and 
straightens it perfectly. But we must not fail to 
mark precisely to what extent, or in what respect, 
the geometrical line is an "ideal construction.' ' It 
is certainly not so as being constructed from the 
non-spatial, from non-extended and purely succes- 
sive elements or material. It is a construction just 
this far, that it is the result of abstracting from 
and correcting the ordinary line of experience. The 
intellect does not make the extension or length of 
the line, but derives the length entirely from the 
lengths of the real lines of experience. If it were 
not for the latter lines furnishing the necessary 
material, and the occasion, the intellect would never 
form and employ the straight line of geometry. 



CHAPTER III. 

(Supplementary to Chapter II.) 

LOCALIZATION OF THE TACTUAL SENSATIONS. 

The tactual sensations always seem to have place 
in the skin or periphery, and are not consciously 
localized in any other part of the body. This expe- 
rience, which appears very simple and direct to 
the ordinary consciousness, has, however, been the 
subject of much philosophizing and of very diverse 
theories. Most psychologists hold that, while the 
tactual sensations certainly appear clearly to have 
place in the skin, they are not really there, but only 
in the brain; and that their appearance in the skin 
is an illusory projection or extradition from the 
nerve centers of the brain. Professor Huxley rep- 
resents the most widely accepted view. Speaking 
of the pain caused by pricking a finger with a pin, 
he says: "I am just as certain that the pain is in 
my finger, as I am that I have it at all. Xor will 
any effort of the imagination enable me to believe 
that the pain is not in my finger. And yet nothing 
is more certain than that it is not, and can not be, 
in the spot in which I feel it, nor within a couple of 



104 Space and Time. 

feet of that spot" "It is perfectly obvious, there- 
fore, that the localization of the pain at the surface 
of the body is an act of the mind. It is an extra*- 
dition of that consciousness, which has its seat in 
the brain, to a definite point of the body." "The 
brain is the sole seat of consciousness." * 

There are various views of the cause or process 
of this extradition. Some impute it to an inborn 
law of mind, "which leads us to localize the affec- 
tion at the spot where the nerve in its healthy and 
proper action terminates." Some make it the result 
of experience, in which is grounded the law, "that 
a sensation appears to us to be situated at the spot 
in which we are accustomed to meet with its usual 
cause or condition." f 

Contrary to the above doctrine of tactual pro- 
jection, a less numerous class of psychologists have 
held that tactual sensation is felt at the periphery 
because it really exists there; that it is not a pro- 
jection from the brain, where only, as others say, 
sensation can take place, but has an original position 
in the skin. They maintain that consciousness, or 
the function of tactile sensibility, is seated not in the 



* Essay, Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics of Sensation*, 
in the vol. on Hume, pp. 256, 257. 

fTaine, On Intelligence (Haye tr.), p. 314. 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 105 

brain only, but also at the periphery, and that sen- 
sations are felt in the periphery because they may 
be thus actually there. 

It must be admitted by all that very plausible 
arguments may be employed in support of the more 
popular and prevalent doctrine of "extradition"; 
nevertheless, the attentive consideration of these 
arguments discovers that they are not entirely con- 
clusive, that they have been too readily accepted as 
final, that they do not by any means successfully 
and easily shut out the doctrine, that tactual sen- 
sation not only appears as if at the superficies, but 
really occurs there. Let us briefly consider some of 
the chief facts and arguments brought forward in 
support of the theory of "extradition." 

As proof that consciousness or tactile sensibility 
is really seated solely at some point or points in 
the brain, the fact is adduced that, when a sensory 
nerve is cut through, sensation ceases in that part of 
the surface to which the nerve ran. "The skin of 
the finger," says Professor Huxley, "is connected 
by a bundle of fine nervous fibres, which run up 
the whole length of the arm, to the spinal marrow, 
which sets them in communication with the brain, 
and we know that the feeling of pain caused by the 
prick of a pin is dependent on the integrity of those 



106 Space and Time;. 

fibres. After they have been cut through close to 
the spinal cord, no pain will be felt, whatever injury 
is done to the finger." * Lotze draws the same gen- 
eral conclusion from the same fact : " The smallest 
interruption in the continuity of a nerve, even in the 
closest proximity to the brain, abolishes the recip- 
rocal action of the soul with that region of the body 
over which the same nerve is expanded." f It is 
inferred from this case that sensation is really in 
the brain because that when the excitation coming 
in from the surface of the body, through the nerve, 
is interrupted no sensation occurs. It is supposed 
that if sensation were really at the surface as it 
seems to be, it should still be felt there after the 
nerve was cut through. 

That the integrity of the nerves is necessary, as 
these writers contend, to surface sensations, can not 
be doubted; but yet this fact does not warrant the 
conclusion that sensations are really in the brain 
alone, and not also at the periphery. Absence of 
sensation after section of a nerve, does not prove 
absence of sensation before section. Because of the 
close relation, which all will admit, between the 
nervous organ and the agent or function of sensi- 



* Op. tit, p. 256. 

^Outlines of Psychology (Ladd), p. 107. 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 107 

bility, so serious an injury to the organ as section, 
may be reasonably supposed to be a sufficient cause 
to put an end to the surface-sensations. The cut-off 
part of a nerve is like a limb broken from a tree. 
The limb withers, dies ; though the tree lives. The 
outer portion of the nerve, having lost vital connec- 
tion with the nervous organism, has lost its fitness 
to serve as the needed physical occasion and basis 
of sensation. If cessation of sensibility after section 
of a nerve prove that the outer end and distribution 
of the nerve was never a seat of sensation, then it 
can be proved by a like argument that even the 
brain itself is not a seat of sensation; for any por- 
tion cut away from the brain (and a very consid- 
erable portion, even a hemisphere, may be removed 
without causing death or destroying the mental 
functions) no longer shows any sign of mental 
life.* Furthermore, it may be held also that, be- 



* This point is remarked also by Simon, Leib und Seele 
bei Fechner und Lotze, p. 46: "Ganz in derselben Weise, wie 
Lotze beweist, dass der Sitz der Seele nicht bis in die Nerven 
hineinreicht, konnte man beweisen, dass auch das Hirn nicht 
der Sitz der Seele sei. Der Nerv zeigt kein seelishes Leben 
mehr, wenn er vom Central-organ des Hirns getrennt ist. — 
doch man lose den wichtigsten Teil des Hirns durch einen 
trennenden Schnitt von der Hauptmasse des Hirns — auch in 
ihm wird sich keine leise Spur eines psychischen Lebens mehr 
entdecken lassen." 



108 Space and Time. 

cause of the brain's position as the great center and 
head of the whole nervous system, its action is nec- 
essary to every tactile sensation and to every other 
mode of consciousness, especially to every con- 
sciousness of the mental unity. Surface-sensations 
may be in part conditioned on refluent currents from 
the center through the unbroken sensory nerves. 
These sensations always involve, or are accom- 
panied by, consciousness of the mental unity. We 
may add that they may be in part conditioned also 
on the special constitution of the ends of the nerves 
or of the terminal corpuscles. 

Certain striking instances of the projection of 
sensations to places or objects outside the super- 
ficies, where they assuredly can not be, are taken 
as conclusive proof that sensations felt in the super- 
ficies itself, as in the skin of a finger, can not be 
there, but are only false projections from the brain. 
Professor Huxley thus describes and argues from 
some of these often recounted phenomena: "Evi- 
dence, as strong as that in favour of the sensation 
being in the finger, can be brought forward in sup- 
port of propositions which are manifestly absurd. 
For example, the hairs and nails are utterly devoid 
or sensibility, as every one knows. Nevertheless, 
if the ends of the nails or hairs are touched, ever 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 109 

so lightly, we feel that they are touched, and the 
sensation seems to be situated in the nails or hairs. 
Nay more, if a walking-stick, a yard long, is held 
firmly by the handle and the other end is touched, 
the tactile sensation, which is a state of our own 
consciousness, is unhesitatingly referred to the end 
of the stick; and yet no one will say that it £5 
there/' * A very remarkable instance of the pro- 
jection of sensations to places where they can not 
be, is in the fact that persons who have lost limbs 
by amputation continue to refer sensations to them 
as if they were present; and this reference may go 
on for years and years. From these cases it is 
reasoned, that as the localization of sensations at 
places and objects external to the superficies is cer- 
tainly false, so localization of sensations in the skin 
and organs that are sound and intact is equally 
false. This inference is thus explicitly drawn by 
Taine. Speaking especially of the reference of sen- 
sations to lost limbs, he says : " It is plain that in 
all these cases, the sensation of twinging, of the 
limb being asleep, of tingling, of pain, is not situ- 
ated in the absent limb, therefore the same sensation 
is not situated in the limb, when the limb is there ; 



* Op. cit, p. 258. 



110 Space and Time. 

thus in the two cases, in the normal and abnormal 
state, the sensation has not the situation we attribute 
to it; it is elsewhere; it is not the sensation, but 
a nervous disturbance which, in the normal state, 
occupies the place at which the sensation seems to 
be;" * and remarks in general: "The situation we 
attribute to our sensations is always false. * * * 
The localizing judgment is an illusion, since we 
invariably situate the sensation where it is not." f 
He holds, as Huxley, that "the sensation really 
takes place in the encephalon." $ 

Projections of tactile sensations to places and 
objects outside the skin, where they certainly can 
not occur, must be accepted as undeniable. Such 
facts are as well established of the tactile sense as 
of the auditory and the visual. But they do not 
justify the very significant conclusion, that the ordi- 
nary localization of sensations in the skin itself is 
also only phenomenal projection from the brain, the 
"sole" seat of sensation. We are not required to 
accept this conclusion, but may resist it as an 
unwarranted salUts in concludendo ; and contend 
that these projections beyond the superficies are 
made from the superficies, or are possible primarily 



" On Intelligence, p. 305. f lb., p. 318. % lb., p. 303. 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. Ill 

because of sensation being actually resident in the 
superficies. We may contend that the places and 
objects outside the superficies would not be known, 
and would not be made or become points for pro- 
jections, if it were not for essential help given by 
sensations really experienced in the superficies. 

An important fact regarding the tactual projec- 
tions as described in the quotations from Professor 
Huxley and M. Taine is, that they are all made 
to points and objects assumed to be already well 
known, or to places where "we are accustomed to 
meet with the usual causes or conditions " of the 
sensations. And it truly seems altogether unlikely 
that sensations would be localized at the ends of 
the nerveless extremities, the hairs and nails, if we 
were not already familiar with the place and exten- 
sion of these extremities; or at the outer end of a 
walking-stick, if we were not acquainted with the 
stick, especially with its dimensions, and with the 
objects against which it is thrust. The projection 
can not be accidental, or be by the mind's own 
motion, unstimulated, unguided, arbitrary; it can 
not be the work of a pure internal law of the sense, 
which operates with precision as to spaces and 
places, unexcited, unaided by the experiential knowl- 
edge of the spaces and places. Sensations are not 



112 Space and Time. 

projected by the pure internal force and determina- 
tion of the sense or the mind to unknown external 
objects; but, rather, well-known external objects 
draw the sensations out, so to speak, to themselves. 

As respects especially the reference of sensations 
to the places of lost limbs, there seems to be no 
strong reason for believing that sensations would 
ever be so referred, if they had not been localized 
in the limbs before the limbs were lost. These 
earlier experiences may be regarded as the neces- 
sary basis of all references to limbs after they are 
gone. This view presupposes a very tenacious asso- 
ciation between sensations and their original places. 

It is the significance of the external causes and 
conditions of the tactual sensations in our practical 
life which gives them the power to detach, so far 
as they do, the sensations from the superficies or 
the mind, and to attach them to themselves. But 
that even the most familiar and important outer 
objects should be able in this manner and degree 
to draw sensations away in appearance from their 
original positions or from the mind and associate 
them with themselves, is one of the most remarkable 
phenomena pertaining to external perception. 

The most important problem for the school of 
Huxley and Taine respecting the localization of the 






Localization of Tactual Sensations. 113 

tactual sensations, and the most important demand 
to be made upon them, is, to show, if all sensations 
be in the brain alone, how we ever come to know 
anything outside the brain, as our bodily organs, 
and extra-corporeal places and objects to which we 
project sensations, or how we "meet" at the surface 
of the body with the usual causes of sensations. 
Sensations being apparently indispensable to exter- 
nal knowledge, it would seem that if they have place 
in the brain alone, they can know, or be the means 
of knowing, only what is in the brain; or all the 
known external would must be really within the 
brain. It is not easy to understand how our knowl- 
edge could ever go beyond the brain if there were 
not sensations beyond the brain. These writers, in 
their assumption of the extra-cranial organs, sur- 
face, objects, as if already existing and known when 
projections are made to them from the brain, seem 
to beg everything regarding external localizations. 

Taine endeavors to answer the problem just 
spoken of. He derives his answer from the mus- 
cular-sense hypothesis of the nature and knowledge 
of space which he has adopted from the English 
psychologists, Bain, Mill and Spencer, and fully ex- 
pounded. According to this hypothesis, as already 
in part noted, space and the objects contained in it 

(8) 



114 Space and Time. 

are muscular sensations of movement and resist- 
ance. A spatial line is a pure succession of muscular 
sensations. A spatial point is the termination of 
such a line. Space is the composition of pure 
temporal series of muscular sensations. Material 
objects are muscular sensations of resistance. Mus- 
cular sensations are not only the means of knowing 
extensions and space, but they are, or they consti- 
tute, extensions and space. Space is not a reality 
independent of our mind or sensations, but is pos- 
sible and actual only in the muscular sensations. In 
particular, a line on the surface of the body is a 
pure time-series of muscular sensations ; and a point 
on the surface is the end of such a series. 

From this hypothesis it follows inevitably that 
the whole spatial world subsists where the muscular 
sensations subsist, that is, only in the brain or in 
the mind; and that the supposition or appearance 
of a world as outside the brain or mind is wholly 
false. The spatial world is the creation of the mus- 
cular sense ; but so far as it appears external to the 
sense or mind it is an illusion. This conclusion 
Taine thus declares and accepts, in substance, for 
himself: "We have found that the objects we call 
bodies are but internal phantoms, that is to say, 
fragments of the Ego, detached from it in appear- 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 115 

ance and opposed to it, though fundamentally they 
are the Ego under another aspect; that, strictly 
speaking, this sky, these stars, these trees, all this 
sensible universe which each of us perceives, is the 
work of each of us, or rather his emanation, or 
rather his creation, an involuntary creation, effected 
by him spontaneously without his consciousness of 
it, and extended to infinity around him." * 

It results respecting the localization of the tactual 
sensations, that placing a tactual sensation at a 
certain point of the superficies is to have a pure 
succession of muscular sensations of a certain length 
terminated by a tactual sensation. We make and 
place a tactual spatial line at the superficies by incor- 
porating a pure succession of muscular sensations 
with a pure temporal experience of tactual sensa- 
tions. These localizations yet, it will be remem- 
bered, Taine declares are fictitious. He says : " The 
situation we attribute to our sensations is always 
false. * * * The localizing judgment is an 
illusion, since we invariably situate the sensation 
where it is not." It is evident, however, that these 
statements are an essential part of the more general 
conclusion just noticed above, regarding the illusory 



* On Intelligence, p. 350. 



116 Space and Time. 

character of the whole external spatial world. "We 
invariably situate the sensation where it is not," 
because we invariably situate it at a place in an 
extra-cranial or extra-mental world that is not out- 
side of the mind. 

We will not deride or stigmatize those psy- 
chologists who find satisfaction in the astonishing 
presumptions and subtilties of the muscular-sense 
hypothesis of the genesis and cognition of spatial 
extension and in the involved conclusions respecting 
the localization of the tactual sensations; but the 
hypothesis should be discarded as being entirely 
fanciful and spurious. Its fundamental postulate 
is, that space-extension is identical with, or a trans- 
formation of, time-extension. Position in space is 
derived from position in time. Length in space is 
generated from or by length of time. A more 
unwarrantable postulate than this can not be imag- 
ined. No real evidence is producible that spatial 
extension is not as original and primitive in exist- 
ence as time, and our knowledge of it not as original 
as that of time. It ensues, in fact, from the muscu- 
lar-sense hypothesis, that there is no real space, but 
only events of time — no spatial, but only temporal, 
positions, distances, extensions. 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 117 

Pure temporal muscular sensations surely do not 
constitute spatial extension or space. There is not 
space because I move freely; but I move freely in 
space already independently existing. The most 
that can be claimed for the muscular sensations is 
what has been before admitted, namely, that they 
are means, but not the only means, of cognizing 
places, extensions and space that already exist and 
are entirely independent of them and of all other sen- 
sations. Space must precede movement; although 
movement must precede the knowledge of space. 
The muscular sensations of movement are especially 
efficient in the cognition of distant and great exten- 
sions. But yet these cognitions are not the result 
of the original ability of the muscular sense; but 
of a derived ability, as we have contended before. 

The real problems regarding the localization of 
the tactual sensations, made more evident by the 
conspicuous faults and failure of the muscular-sense 
hypothesis, are these : How do we situate these 
sensations in a space and at objects already existing 
and quite independent of them? Are these sensa- 
tions within the brain alone, or do they occur ; 
at the external and equally real superficies? Is it 



118 Space and Time. 

possible for the tactual sensibility, by its presence and 
diffusion in the superficies, to give of itself, origi- 
nally, the places, reciprocal distances, and extensions 
of its sensations? 

We have considered the objections to the real 
occurrence of tactual sensations in the skin, based 
on the stopping of sensations after section of nerves, 
and on projections of sensations that are known 
to be false — that are made to places where sensa- 
tions manifestly can not be. We have found these 
objections to be indecisive. The argument from 
section of nerves evidently proves too much, and is 
otherwise inconclusive. The false projections of 
sensations to objects outside the skin are indispu- 
table; but they by no means compel the conclusion 
that localization of sensations in the skin itself is 
false projection. These plausible objections still 
leave us free, as far as they go, to maintain the 
theory of actual occurrence of sensations in the skin, 
if we have any evidence of actuality or possibility. 

The persistent and invincible conviction, which 
is recognized by all, of our really experiencing sen- 
sations in the skin can not be easily surrendered on 
the accusation of illusoriness. It may well induce 
hesitation, and suspicion of some defect in the 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 119 

supposed demonstration of its falsity. Again, the 
assumption that the sense or the mind, considered 
as situate at a point in the brain, can be stimulated 
or can be able to "extradite" a sensation across an 
unmeasured, untraversed interval of space, to a 
remote part of the superficies, which is unknown, 
and which can not be known immediately, because 
of the space-distance between it and the seat of the 
mind, is incredible. Tactual sensations are falsely 
projected from the superficies as an original seat 
to well-known outer points ; they are ordinarily not 
falsely projected from the brain to the superficies 
itself. 

Further, we may well inquire, why should not 
tactual sensations take place as really at the outer 
end and ramifications of the nervous organ as at 
the inner end ? The possibility of the real existence 
of these simple sensations in the skin is favored by 
some facts of comparative psychology and develop- 
ment. It is remarked by McKendrick and Snod- 
grass: There is the important question "whether 
physiologists are right in relegating consciousness 
entirely to the gray matter of the brain. The facts 
of comparative physiology are against a view so 
exclusive, because we can not deny consciousness to 



120 Space and Time. 

many animals having rudimentary nervous systems, 
or none at all.^ ^ Professor Paulsen notes: "In 
den niedersten Formen tierischen Lebens finden wir 
kein Nervensystem, das seelische Leben daran zu 
heften. Der Korper der Protisten weist uberhaupt 
nichts von einem Zentrum auf, in den man den Sitz 
des Seelenlebens lieber als an jeden andern Punkt 
des Systems verlegen sollte. * * * 1st der 
organischen Materie ursprunglich an jedem Punkt 
Beseeltheit eigen, so ist nicht abzusehen, wie sie 
dieselbe spater sollte vollig eingebiisst haben : Zen- 
tralisierung des physischen Lebensprozesses auf 
hoheren Entwickelungsstufen is mit Umbildung des 
Lebens der Teile begleitet, aber nicht mit Vernich- 
tung. Sollte nicht auf psychischen Gebiet ein Ahn- 
liches stattfinden?" f Huxley observes especially 
of the epidermis: "One of the most wonderful 
revelations of embryology is the proof of the fact 
that the brain itself is, at its first beginning, merely 
an infolding of the epidermic layer of the general 
integument. Hence it follows that the rods and 
cones of the vertebrate eye are modified epidermic 



* Physiology of the Senses, p. 287. 

f Binleitung in die Philosophie, 4 AufL, p. 144. 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 121 

cells. * * * All the higher sense organs start 
from one foundation." * 

We seem, then, to be not without justification 
by the present state of science in holding to the 
general view that, since tactual sensations are cer- 
tainly localized, or certainly seem to exist, in the 
skin, this depends upon the real presence of simple 
tactual sensibility in the skin, by which presence we 
have immediate knowledge of the tactual positions 
and extensions; that the sensations are not merely 
phenomenal projections to these positions, like the 



* Sensations and the Sensiferous Organs (Vol. on Hume), 
p. 316. 

The same fact has been remarked by others: 

"The sensitive cells of the epidermis are the sources of 
all the different sense-organs. * * * The rod-cells in the 
retina of the eye, the auditory cells in the cochlea of the ear, 
the olfactory cells in the nose, and the taste-cells on the 
tongue, are all originally derived from the simple, indifferent 
cells of the epidermis, which cover the entire surface of the 
body," etc. (Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, p. 293. See 
pp. 294-5.) 

" Pfliiger has attempted to demonstrate by many experi- 
ments that consciousness is not confined to the brain, but is 
also connected with the spinal cord. Why, however, draw a 
line at the spinal cord? Is not nerve substance the same with 
that from which the spinal cord and the brain develop, are 
not all nerve cells primarily mere modifications of cells of the 
outer skin?" (Williams, Evolutional Ethics, p. 317.) 



122 Space and Time. 

projections of tactual sensations to points or objects 
outside the skin, but appear to be in the skin because 
they really are in it; that, in short, the apparent 
existence of sensations at the periphery can be 
accounted for only by their real existence there — 
they make their places known of themselves by their 
actual presence. 

It appears indisputable that the visual and motor 
senses do not, instead of the tactual sense itself, 
originally furnish the places or knowledge of the 
places at the periphery for the localization of the 
tactual sensations. These senses have no such pre- 
cedence and leadership over the tactual sense. Facts 
seemingly warrant just the opposite assumption, 
viz., that the tactual sense is the leader of the visual 
and motor in all their perceptions of depth or of 
distance from their original seat or from their 
immediate organs; that it furnishes the first basis 
for the knowledge by sight of the outlines of the 
body, and for the knowledge by the motor sense of 
places where tactual sensations are excited by the 
extremity of a moving limb. Knowledge of the 
place of the tactual sensations by the eye and by 
the end of a finger moved with the arm is only a 
mediate perception, being acquired by association 
with the tactile sense to which the knowledge is 



Localization of Tactual Sensations. 123 

immediate. In other words, the visual and motor 
sensations are only signs of these places, which 
recall by association the original knowledge of the 
places by the tactile sense. Moreover, it is probable 
that projections of tactual sensations to objects out- 
side the superficies are made from the immediately 
known and localized sensations in the superficies; 
and if it were not for the latter there would be 
no such projections. We come to a knowledge of 
objects external to the superficies by the necessary 
aid given us by sensations actually occurring in it 
and excited by them. 

But it must be granted that, though the knowl- 
edge by the tactile sense of positions in the super- 
ficies is immediate, still some time is needed to 
acquire it. The first impressions on the day of 
birth are not truly and clearly localized. The infant 
apparently does not for a considerable time situate 
sensations in the toes or the legs precisely. Con- 
sciousness goes through a development in the cog- 
nition of the dermal places. Time is required for 
consciousness to rise to the mastery of plurality of 
sensations, or to come to considerable exercise of 
the power of memory, comparison and unification. 
Though endowed with the innate capability of 
immediately knowing the place of sensations in the 



124 Space and Time. 

superficies, the mind seems to be at first sunk in 
profound dormancy and to require many excitations 
to awaken it and bring it fully to itself. 

Finally, we briefly remark something further 
respecting the projection of sensations to the places 
of absent limbs, which has been by so many regarded 
as conclusive proof against the actual presence of 
tactual sensations in the superficies, or proof that 
the apparent presence is but illusory projection 
from the brain. It is very probable that, as already 
observed, sensations would not be projected to a 
lost member, if sensations had not been frequently 
experienced in the member before it was lost. The 
projections seem to be the result of familiarity in 
the past with sensations in the member, or of asso- 
ciation of sensations with it made strong by frequent 
repetition. 

This association is, for many causes, long pre- 
served in vivid memory. So constant and so impor- 
tant is the use and advantage of the arms and legs 
that the loss of one of them is a misfortune which 
will not allow itself to be forgotten, but will always 
keep itself fresh in mind. The embarrassment of 
the present will continually recall the facility and 
experiences of the past. The unfortunate person 
will be reminded of his lost organ also by the cease- 



Localization off Tactual Sensations. 125 

less comparison he is forced to make between his 
disadvantage and the advantage of those who have 
not suffered the like loss. Doubtless reference of 
sensations to an absent, and also to a congenitally 
imperfect, limb is in cases explicable at least in part 
by the sense-experiences in the corresponding limb 
on the other side of the body which remains or is 
perfect. 



CHAPTER IV. 

NATURE AND COGNITION OF TIME. 

I. R^auty and Nature; of Timx 

The question, What is Time? has a similar 
diversity of mode and answer to that of the cor- 
responding question regarding Space. Is Time a 
distinct entity, or is it a property or relation of 
entities? Has it subjective or objective existence, 
or both? Is it real, or only phenomenal? It has 
long been the view of many, we may say the gen- 
erality of men, that time is a distinct or independent 
reality, in which events or changes occur, as it is 
held that space is a reality in which things have 
place; that there is a time-room which contains 
events and successions, as there is a space-room 
which contains objects. Many arguments against 
the reality of time are directed against time as so 
understood. Numerous others, following the lead 
of Kant, have held that time is only a form of our 
sensibility, a mode of our perception; is not a real 
property of the mind, or of anything in the mind, or 
of any object outside the mind, but is only a form 



Nature: and Cognition of Time. 127 

in which the timeless mind casts its perceptions. 
According to this view, time is only ideal, or has 
reality only as an appearance; it has no existence 
as an entity or as an actual property of the mind 
or of any other reality. It is not our purpose to 
enter upon a particular discussion of these or other 
historical theories of the nature of time; but shall 
proceed at once to a statement of what we suppose 
to be time's real character. 

Time is not a distinct or independent reality, 
but is a property or attribute of realities — of the 
mind, of objects in the mind, and objects outside the 
mind. It is simply the permanence, duration, con- 
tinuance, of things. Time is not only an apparent, 
but an actual, attribute. It has genuine reality ; not 
indeed as an entity or substance, but as an attribute. 
And we may add, with special regard to the relation 
of time to the mind, that it is not a product or 
creation of our mind or thought, but its property. 
Time exists thus with realities, and as long as reali- 
ties. If space and its contents, or all realities, were 
annihilated, time as their attribute would be anni- 
hilated with them. It would not remain as an 
empty and independent entity after they were gone. 

" Duration, " it has been said, "can only mean 
continuous existence through time, and without the 



128 Space and Time. 

notion of time duration loses all significance." * 
We should rather assert that duration is time ; there 
is no time, and no need of time, independent of the 
duration of things. Banish all enduring realities, 
including space, and time goes with them. A thing 
may indeed endure, or seem to endure, through 
time; yet not time as an absolute or independent 
reality, but the time of other things contempora- 
neous or older. The only independent time is the 
time of other things or of the environment. There- 
fore in our measurements of time we generally esti- 
mate the time of one thing in the time of another — 
of the transient in the time of the permanent, of 
the small in the time of the great. Successions we 
measure by means of longer and more important 
successions. 

Everything has its duration or time; but there 
are yet not different times or times independent of 
one another. There is, in fact, but one time, namely, 
the time of the world, or the general system of 
things, or the universe. The duration of every- 
thing is of the duration of the universe, and for the 
reason that everything is an undetachable element, 
part or member of the universe. Further, the one 



*Bowne, Metaphysics, Second ed., p. 179. 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 129 

time has absolute length, and the times of all objects 
have the same absoluteness of length. It is true 
that in our direct estimates of time., i. e., in our 
estimates by our thought without the use of a chro- 
nometer, we vary in our measurements of the same 
real length : a pleasant time is judged to be shorter 
than a painful time of the same identical length ; our 
judgment is warped by our feelings and passions, 
and by other means. Still duration is everywhere 
of the same absoluteness of length; though our 
thought varies in its estimates, time itself does not 
vary : an hour which seems to be long is really 
not a moment longer than an hour which seems 
to be short. It is an old saying, that "time flows 
equally'' ; and it is true with the meaning that time 
is ''uniformly successive in its parts and homo- 
geneous throughout its entire length." 

Succession or change and simultaneity are often 
treated as modes of time or as distinctions within 
time. They are of the elementary and most certain 
distinctions of our experience. It may be casually 
remarked of permanence that it unites in itself dura- 
tion and identity. Succession may be described 
as broken duration, or as duration divided into 
portions, but portions which are never really or 
conceivably separable. A succession may consist of 
(9) 



130 Space and Time;. 

terms that are qualitatively the same, or of terms 
that are qualitatively different. By change we 
probably mean or imply generally a succession of 
qualitatively different terms. Simultaneity is of 
permanent and identical objects, and of events, that 
are together; it is also of different successions that 
do not follow one another, but run side by side. 
Simultaneous objects or events are together, in many 
cases with one other object or event that is con- 
spicuous ; and simultaneous successions are together, 
often with one other succession that has superior 
importance. 

From the definition of time and these general 
statements of facts, we proceed to consider some of 
the arguments that are employed against the reality 
of time, as they may seem pertinent especially to 
time as just defined and described. Objections, 
similar to those made against the reality of space, 
are made against the reality of time. Among the 
most notable of these are the objections grounded 
upon the contradictory impossibilities of our thought 
respecting the whole extent and the divisibility of 
time. It is said, rightly as all must admit, that 
we can imagine neither an absolute beginning nor 
an absolute ending of time, and neither an infinite 
recession nor an infinite progression of time; and, 



Nature and Cognition of Timb. 131 

further, as respects divisibility, that we can imagine 
neither an absolute limit to the division of time 
nor its infinite division. In the words of Sir W. 
Hamilton: "Time is positively inconceivable, if we 
attempt to construe it in thought; — either, on the 
one hand, as absolutely commencing or absolutely 
terminating, or on the other, as infinite or eternal, 
whether ab ante or a post; and it is no less incon- 
ceivable, if we attempt to fix an absolute minimum 
or to follow out an infinite division." * 

Then, first as regards the opposing impossibili- 
ties of thought as to the total extent of time, it is 
argued, as we have seen it to be argued by meta- 
physicians respecting space, that since we can not 
conceive time as having no time before it and none 
after it, nor as infinitely receding and proceeding, 
therefore time is incomprehensible, it is self-contra- 
dictory and illusory or a fictitious appearance. Our 
apparent knowledge of time is no true knowledge, 
but only ignorance ; our thought is shut in between 
alternative impossibilities, it is self-contradictory 
and can not be true to reality. 

It seems hardly necessary to dwell on the incon- 
clusiveness of this reasoning, and to show that it is 



* Discussions j p. 571. 



132 Space and Time. 

as worthless in respect to time as the similar reason- 
ing in respect to space. We certainly do not know 
the whole extent of time ; we can not conceive how 
far it runs backward or how far it will run forward ; 
we can not tell when things began, or whether and 
where they will cease ; but, none the less, we know 
or definitely think of great stretches of time, as the 
long time of history and the much longer time of 
geology. Why, notwithstanding our inability to 
know or to think of time in its total length, or of 
the world in its total duration, should not this very 
long finite and relative, but definitely thinkable, time 
be real and our thought of it be true? Why must 
we know the whole of time to know any of it; or 
why should it be said, "until we have reached a 
whole we have reached nothing''? Again, what 
possible genuine basis can there be for the assertion, 
made by some metaphysicians, that time perishes in 
an endless process beyond itself? 

There seems to be no real basis for treating the 
limited and related times, long and short, which 
we know as self-contradictory and unreal, and our 
thought of them as ignorance or a false light. 
We know with much certainty the duration of the 
Roman Empire from 753 B. C. to 476 and 1453 
A. C. We have probable knowledge of historical 



Nature and Cognition of Time:. 133 

time that runs back of the founding of Rome four 
or five thousand years. Then we come to dark 
ages. How far these run back, whether to an 
infinite distance or only to a remote point, we do 
not know and can not conceive. But our inability, 
however long we may make the effort, to think of 
the regress and also the progress of time as either 
infinite or absolutely finite, does not afford a shadow 
of ground for the conclusion that "time perishes in 
an endless process beyond itself " or by transition 
to an "illusory perfection," The relative historical 
time which we cognize, and which we divide by 
exact dates into portions short and long, does not 
perish; it abides, we may say, by memory and by 
records ; besides, it should be noted that though the 
motions and changes of things pass and end, the 
things themselves do not end, but endure and pre- 
serve the reality of time. The unknown part of 
time can not make the known unreal or illusory ; the 
far unknown does not make unreal the near known. 
The comprehensible finite and definite time, we 
should insist, certainly is not found to be nothing 
or a fiction in the forever unsuccessful endeavor to 
conceive either how much time preceded or how 
much will follow it. Further, it is in no wise ever 
inconsistent or contradictory with itself, and never 



134 Space and Time. 

suffers anything like the disappearance, dissolution, 
annihilation, which some imagine and contend for. 
The case in brief is this : We know a part, a large 
part, of the homogeneous whole, but not all, because 
of the limitations of our intellect; and there is no 
ground for denying the reality of the known part. 
We can comprehend a genuine part of duration 
within outer parts before and after of inconceivable 
extent. It may be said likewise of our thought of 
finite and relative time, that though it is shut in, in 
both directions, by impossibilities of conception, and 
is thus "conditioned/' it is not self-contradictory 
and untrue. Our thought is weak, it can not grasp 
all time; but it is neither deceiving nor deceived. 
It can not be declared to be untrue to the long 
historical, and very much longer geological and 
astronomical, times which it is able to comprehend. 
The strongest argument against the self-consistency 
and reality of the finite and relative time which 
we seem to know, and against the truthfulness of 
our conditioned knowledge, is the obstinate and 
unjustifiable prejudice of metaphysicians. 

Again, the reality of time, as that of space, is 
denied on considerations respecting divisibility. As 
to time, it will be admitted by all we can not con- 
ceive its divisibility either as having an end or as 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 135 

being endless, either as having an absolute limit 
or as being unlimited, infinite. Many, then, have 
argued that though neither of these contradictory 
alternatives is conceivable, yet one of them must be 
true. In this dilemma, the greater number appar- 
ently have decided in favor of the second alternative, 
that is, the possibility of the endless division of 
time; or they have held that the division of time 
may be possibly carried down to parts that are 
timeless, durationless. In this ultimate division, the 
relations between parts come to be empty rela- 
tions, that is, relations without parts, or relations 
of nothings. The conclusion is then drawn that 
time must be composed of ultimate parts or units 
that are timeless or non-existing, and therefore that 
time is not time, that it can not be real, but is only 
an illusion, as real time can not be composed of 
timeless elements. It is further said that as every 
portion of time is divisible — divisible into before 
and after — it can not be a genuine unit. Time 
passes away by internal division, or it is the " false 
appearance of a timeless reality." 

Mr. Bradley remarks: "If you take time as a 
relation between units without duration, then the 
whole time has no duration, and is not time at all. 
But, if you give duration to the whole time, then 



136 Space and Time. 

at once the units themselves are found to possess 
it ; and they thus cease to be units. Time, in fact, 
is 'before' and 'after' in one; and without this 
diversity it is not time. But these differences can 
not be asserted of the unity ; and, on the other hand 
and failing that, time is helplessly dissolved. Hence 
they are asserted under a relation. ' Before in rela- 
tion to after' is the character of time. * * * 
The relation is not an unity, and yet the terms are 
non-entities if left apart." * He says again: "No 
duration is single. The would-be unit falls asunder 
into endless plurality, in which it disappears. The 
pieces of duration, each containing a before and an 
after, are divided against themselves, and become 
mere relations of the illusory." f And again: 
"Time must be made, and yet can not be made, of 
pieces." J He arrives at the general conclusion: 
"Time, like space, has most evidently proved not 
to be real, but to be a contradictory appearance." § 
The oracular reasoning of Mr. Bradley is sin- 
gularly capricious and illogical. His central error 
consists in the assumption that, as time is divided by 
a sort of ideality or by words, it is divisible actually. 



* Appearance and Reality, p. 39. fib., p. 46. 

t lb., p. 61. § lb., p. 43. 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 137 

He treats the actual division of time as if it were 
the easiest and most familiar process known. But 
a more arbitrary and unjustifiable assumption can 
not well be made. An ideal, though not an imagi- 
nable, division of time is certainly possible ; we may 
talk and reason about division with perfect ease and 
clearness of understanding; but the actual division 
of time into parts of any perceivable or imaginable 
length, and more certainly into parts having no 
length at all, is altogether unimaginable and impos- 
sible. We are expected unhesitatingly to admit as 
always possible and actual a division which, as far 
as our knowledge goes, and as far as we have any 
reason to believe, never has taken place and never 
can take place. The time Mr. Bradley himself 
starts with is forever indivisible. It is undivided 
at the beginning, and actual division is not known 
to be possible ever afterwards. 

We divide or mark a yard-stick into inches, 
without chopping it into inches; and, though the 
stick is so marked, as by a series of stamped charac- 
ters running from one end to the other, it perfectly 
preserves its integrity. So we divide a day into 
hours, without sundering it into hour-pieces, and 
without being by any means able to do so ; the day 
thus divided into hours still preserves, as a day, its 



138 Space and Time. 

unity absolutely. If time were actually divisible 
into ultimate parts that are timeless, then it would 
possibly be liable to all this sad fortune of self- 
destruction, dissolution, disappearance ; but since 
actual division into parts of any length, or no 
length, is unimaginable and never known to be 
actual or possible, the postulate of dissolution and 
disappearance is a voluble delusion. 

The continuity and discreteness of time have 
been thus compared: "Time is both continuous 
and discrete, continuous as quantity, discrete as a 
measurable quantity divided into intervals of days, 
months, years, etc. These intervals designate and 
measure temporal duration. Duration, thus consid- 
ered, consists in immanent measures and divisions 
of time. But since time is continuous as well as 
discrete, all time-intervals may be regarded as parts 
of one infinite whole of duration." * Still it should 
always be distinctly observed, that though the con- 
tinuity and discreteness of time are thus distinguish- 
able, yet discreteness is never actually separated 
from continuity, but always united with it. Hours 
and days are never actually separated from one 
another, but are absolutely continuous. There is 



* Philosophical Dictionary (Baldwin), II. p. 698 a. 



Nature; and Cognition of Time. 139 

never any real break in time. Continuity is real, 
but discreteness is only ideal' — the ideal divisibility 
of really indivisible continuity. 

Since real division of time is not known to be 
possible, there is no ground for asserting that time 
is made of pieces or parts, or is a composite. Meta- 
physicians have erred in the same grave way in 
respect to time, as they have in respect to space, by 
treating it as if, like a bit of matter, it were a com- 
position, and were, therefore, divisible into separate 
parts. Actual division of matter into separable parts 
and recomposition are among the most familiar 
facts; but anything of like character pertaining to 
time has never been known, and can not be main- 
tained, by any one. 

As time or any arbitrary portion of it, a day, 
an hour, a minute, is indivisible, and division, so 
far as we know, never has been and never will be 
possible or actual, we are compelled to refuse the 
particular conclusions of Mr. Bradley regarding the 
unity and simplicity of time, and to adopt the con- 
trary. "Time in fact," he says, "is 'before' and 
'after' in one, and without this diversity it is not 
time. But these differences can not be asserted of 
the unity; and, on the other hand and failing that, 
time is helplessly dissolved." The fact is, every 



140 Space and Time. 

duration, long or short, is a true unit. As a unit it 
embraces indeed the peculiar duality of before and 
after, or of the past and the present. It embraces 
them, but yet is neither compounded of them nor 
resolvable into them as separable elements. Before 
and after exist only as they exist together or in 
unbroken continuity. Each is necessary to the 
other. Without the other either would not be. 
Co-existing in such necessary association, they form 
a true and indissoluble unit. The assertion that "the 
would-be unit falls asunder into endless plurality, 
in which it disappears," is wholly unwarranted 
and arbitrary. Every portion of duration, though 
embracing distinguishable parts, appears to be abso- 
lutely solid and unbreakable, an indestructible unit; 
there is never disappearance by falling asunder or 
dissolution. The unit never shows any disposition 
or ability to fall asunder, but conserves its integrity 
as if by an irresistible and unchangeable determi- 
nation. As we have contended that the finite and 
relative time we know does not perish by endless 
process outside itself, we now contend that it does 
not perish by process of division and dissolution 
inside, nor by the outside and inside processes com- 
bined. In fine, duration is a unique, perfect, and 
apparently eternal unitary property inclosing distin- 



Nature: and Cognition of Time:. 141 

guishable parts. Holding thus before and after, or 
past and present, in indissoluble unity, is the most 
peculiar characteristic, and, we may add, the mys- 
tery, of time. Time, then, possesses a unity of its 
own kind, as does space; it includes in indivisible 
oneness both before and after, as space includes 
both here and there; and time's species of unity, 
equally with that of space, must be regarded by 
metaphysicians as primordial, and, so far as can be 
known, imperishable. It may be remarked that in 
their theories of the nature of both space and time, 
many metaphysicians have been too much influenced 
by the Kantian phenomenology, which in both its 
matter and vocabulary has outlived its usefulness 
and continues a presumptuous hindrance to the 
progress of a better ontology and epistemology. 
The arguments against the reality of time, based on 
the contradictory impossibilities, or the antinomies, 
respecting both the total extent and the divisibility 
of time, or our thought of them, seem to constitute 
only a complex delusion. 

An argument of this sort has been made against 
the reality, and for the ideality, of time : The past 
is gone, the future is not yet, the present is but 
the infinitesimal instant that divides the past and 
future, or rather is not time at all; therefore, it is 



142 Space and Time. 

concluded, time can not really exist. Those who 
reason in this manner generally fail duly to recog- 
nize and appreciate the very important and decisive 
fact, namely, that though the past is not now, still it 
has been, and has left memories of itself. Because 
it has been, and has left permanent foundations of 
memories of itself which include one of the pro- 
foundest and most dominating convictions of our 
soul, that is, the present belief of the reality of the 
past, the past has an ontological superiority, so to 
speak, over the future, and must not be placed on 
a level with it. The future is not now and never 
has been. In never having been it is inferior to the 
past, which though not now existing, yet has had 
existence and has left present effects and perma- 
nent realities. We indeed expect the future, as 
we remember the past; but it must be admitted 
that, in relation to reality, expectation is inferior to 
memory. We are less certain of the future than 
of the past. Therefore while we must grant the 
unreality of the future, since it is not yet and has 
never been, we must not grant likewise the unreality 
of past time. The past is certainly gone, but it has 
left abiding vestiges and realities which are endowed 
with unique capabilities of reproduction and cre- 
ation of belief. If we may not be able to conclude 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 143 

to the reality of time from the relation of the present 
to the future, yet we are able so to conclude from 
the relation of the present to the past. 

We have been arguing that time is a real and 
universal property of things — that it has genuine, 
full and permanent reality and belongs to every 
existing object; and have been resisting certain 
objections. But many metaphysicians contend fur- 
ther for contrary views. They hold that time is 
not ultimately real or valid; that it is a transient 
phase of things, a "superficial terrestrial adherence 
to thought," and is to be superseded or transcended ; 
that presentation in time is a lower form of thought, 
" deficient and inadequate to the truth"; that time 
is "for" the mind, but is no real attribute of it. 
There is discoverable sometimes among metaphy- 
sicians an incomprehensible ardor to degrade time 
and to get rid of it. As obstinately opposing these 
views appear the everlasting presence of time and 
its very great prominence and function in all our 
life. But we shall not proceed in extended counter- 
argument ; for the main design of this discussion is 
not criticism and demolition, but construction; we 
must be content for the most part with the state- 
ment and elucidation of a positive doctrine. Some 
of these negative conclusions seem to be the result 



144 Space; and Tims. 

of a disposition in metaphysicians to take nature, 
not as it is, but as they think it ought to be. 

Opposing the universality of time, some contend 
for the existence of timeless realities, as a timeless 
mind or subject. They very emphatically deny time 
to God, and assert that, for him, there is only a 
totum simul, or all events are " present at once." 
But no certain evidence has ever been produced of 
one timeless reality in the universe. Time persist- 
ently appears to be in and of everything, it invincibly 
holds its place against timelessness everywhere. 
There are no conclusive reasons for treating time as 
a mere form, and not an attribute, of thought; or 
as a passing phase of things ; or as a characteristic 
of the lower levels of thought and existence, which 
is transcended upon the higher. It does not appear 
to be a degradation or misrepresentation of God to 
impute to him time as an attribute. It can not be 
maintained that time is an entity in any wise inde- 
pendent of God ; but why may it not belong to him, 
or be for him, as an attribute ? Why may there not 
be real succession, or real past and present, in his 
activity? Why may he not produce, from a primi- 
tive design, an evolution of being that is actually 
temporal, and himself not have like duration with 



Nature: and Cognition of Time. 145 

his production? It seems certain we should not 
easily accept any doctrine similar to that of the noto- 
rious Hegelian proposition, that the "true knowl- 
edge of God begins when we know that things as 
they immediately are [including their temporality] 
have no truth. " What we assume and affirm of the 
divine being must not be inconsistent and irrecon- 
cilable with our near and confirmed knowledge of 
human attributes and conditions. Our ignorance 
of, and inability to conceive, the whole duration of 
God, or his remote past and remote future, proves 
nothing against the consistent reality of his dura- 
tion, and against that portion of it which we may 
know. Most assuredly there is no divisibility that 
would dissolve or disintegrate a temporal subject 
to nothingness. We should, however, suppose that 
God differs from man in possessing a memory and 
expectation that are in every way complete and per- 
fect — an absolutely perfect retention of the past, 
and a like vision of the future. 

Finally, we will here speak briefly of a subject 
which we shall probably have occasion to consider 
more fully hereafter, namely, the pragmatic doc- 
trine that our idea, experience, even the reality, of 
time is caused by our cravings, longings, dissatis- 

(io) 



146 Space and Time. 

factions, social relations.* This theory makes more 
particular reference to future time than to past; 
these emotions being especially represented as pro- 
ducing the future in order to provide for their own 
fulfillment. But this procedure does not seem to 
accord with the real order of our experience. Our 
knowledge of the past is earlier and more important 
than our knowledge of the future. In our cog- 
nitions of time, at least our earlier cognitions, the 



* "A mere series of ' nows ' would give us no knowledge 
of time. * * * It is the impulses and interests that the 
present does not satisfy that bring the fact of timel before 
us; it is appetition that leads us to await; and the tension of 
pursuit gradually nearing its prize that marks the succession 
and measures the length of time." (Ward, Naturalism and 
Agnosticism, II. p. 146.) 

"Dissatisfaction, unfulfilled craving, and the time-expe- 
rience seem to be bound up together, and time to be merely 
the abstract expression of the yearning of the finite individual 
for a systematic realisation of its own purpose which lies 
forever beyond its reach as finite. * * * The finitei, just 
because its very nature as finite is to aspire to a perfection 
which is out of reach, must have its experience marked with 
the distinction of now from by and by, of desire from per- 
formance." (Taylor, Metaphysics, pp. 262-3.) 

"Our experience of time is for us essentially an expe- 
rience of longing, of pursuit, of restlessness. ,, (Royce, The 
World and the Individual, II. p. 125.) "In pursuing its goals, 
the Self lives in time." {lb., p. 134.) 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 147 

relation of the now to the past is more for us than 
the relation of the now to the future. Again, it 
seems to be a mistake, in explaining the rise of the 
thought of time, to give such exclusive attention 
and precedence to these emotional experiences. No 
doubt, we have the knowledge of time with our 
craving, appetition, pursuit ; but hardly more really 
than with other successive experiences of what- 
ever kind. Every succession of mental affections is 
accompanied by the sense of time. The soul does 
indeed live in time "in pursuing its goals"; but it 
just as really lives in time when it has successive 
experiences that involve no pursuit of anything, that 
have no goal in sight; as in a series of sensations 
occasioned unexpectedly by an independent outer 
object or another person. The emotions that look 
towards the future have much influence in deter- 
mining the vividness of our thought of the future, 
our interest in it, the care and accuracy of our 
estimates; but they are no more essential to the 
sense of the future than series of affections that look 
chiefly towards the past or than any other class of 
mental affections. The thought of the future in the 
original and earlier instances is an absolutely spon- 
taneous act of mind, independent of purpose, wish 
or volition. Actual succession of any kind of expe- 



148 Space and Time. 

riences will occasion it. The essential condition is 
past succession, not the special character of the 
terms of the succession. Further, our desires, 
cravings, aspirations, imply an already existing 
time; for they are the result of development, they 
rise gradually to strength and domination through 
temporal conditions. Therefore it rather seems that 
they are made by time, than that time is made by 
them. They do not of themselves create or pro- 
vide time for their own fulfillment, but find time 
prepared altogether independently of themselves as 
the condition of their fulfillment. The pragmatic 
hypothesis, though apparently gratuitous and base- 
less, is yet not without interest as a psychological 
novelty. 

II. Our Cognition of Time. 

The question of the reality of time, as of the 
reality of everything else, stands in the closest asso- 
ciation with the question of knowledge. Time, like 
all qualities and realities, is real for us only as it 
is known by us. Our knowing certainly does not 
produce or create time ; rather, the reality of time is 
the fundamental condition of our thought or knowl- 
edge of it ; nevertheless, time has reality for us only 
as it is known. We can affirm reality only upon 



Nature; and Cognition of Time. 149 

knowledge. There is no problem as to the cognition 
of empty time, or of independent and abstract time ; 
for there is no such time. The only time is the 
duration of things, the property, i. e., the contin- 
uance, the endurance, of things. If enduring reali- 
ties did not exist, there would be no time; if they 
were extinguished, time would perish with them. 
Therefore it is properly said, that we have no 
knowledge of time that is not the time of some- 
thing, there being no time independent of or apart 
from realities. 

It has been maintained above that time or dura- 
tion is the property of all things, — of space and 
all it contains, as mind and matter; but also that 
there is a unity in all durations, because all things 
are closely linked together as members of one gen- 
eral enduring system, or all parts have the time 
of the whole. There is a corresponding unity in 
our thought of times. We know the one duration 
because we know things in their relations with one 
another and as constituents of one world. 

The first and most directly known time is that 
of our own mind, self, or experience. It is so 
because our own self or successive experience is 
nearer, is more intimate, to us than is anything 
else, — in a sense that will become clearer as we pro- 



150 Space; and Time. 

ceed. This is substantially the doctrine of Locke. 
He says: a That we have our notion of succession 
and duration from this original, viz., from reflection 
on the train of ideas which we find to appear one 
after another in our own minds, seems plain to 
me." * Further, not only is the time of self the 
first known to us, but the time of everything dis- 
tinct from and outside of self is known through it. 
In other words, we know the time of any external 
reality or event, by means of our knowledge of the 
duration of the effects which it produces on us or 
on the train of our experience. Knowledge of the 
changes and time of our experience is the necessary 
medium of the knowledge of the time of every- 
thing else; just as our experience, our sensations 
and other modes of consciousness, are the medium 
of our knowledge of every other property of outer 
things. Moreover, we come readily to know object- 
ive times that are vastly longer than our personal 
duration, by ideal elongation, repetition, multipli- 
cation, synthesis, of the times of our personal expe- 
riences. Thus, in general, the knowledge of the 
time of self, or of the stream of experience, is first 
and direct; that of all external reality is indirect, 



* Essay, II. xiv. 4. 



Nature; and Cognition of Time:. 151 

through the time of our experiences as the indis- 
pensable medium. 

Then, the first and chief problem for us con- 
cerning the cognition of time is, How does the mind 
know its own duration? or, How do we become 
cognizant of the time of our successive ideas or 
the stream of consciousness? This is one of the 
great problems of epistemological science, and many 
answers have been offered. We are compelled to 
admit that the problem is not an easy one, and 
even that a complete answer is impossible. We can 
proceed a certain distance towards a solution, but 
then we encounter barriers that seem to be forever 
impassable. 

The main difficulty in solving this problem is 
in the fact that we can have immediate or direct 
knowledge only of the present; or in the fact as 
stated by Professor James, that "the feeling of past 
time is a present feeling." * The mind does not 
exist at or in the past or in the future; for the 
past is gone, and the future is not yet; it can then 
directly know only the point of time where it is, 
that is, the present; it can not directly know the 
past or the future. Thereupon the hard question 



* Psychology, I. 627. 



152 Space and Time, 

arises, How come we to know time that is not pres- 
ent ? and of what sort is our knowledge of it, since 
it is not direct? How does the present thought 
know the past, or how come to have in itself the 
conviction of the past, or the conviction that it rep- 
resents the past? or, How come the present and 
past to be combined in a momentary and unitary 
knowledge ? In struggling with this great problem, 
we shall consider chiefly the question of our cog- 
nition of the past, or of the relation of the present 
to the past, and not the question of our cognition 
of the future, or of the relation of the present to 
the future; because the former knowledge comes 
first in actual occurrence and is the more assured 
and important. 

The mind becomes cognizant of its past, or of 
its present and past in their actual unity and indi- 
visibility, or it combines its present and past in a 
unitary and indivisible knowledge at the present 
moment, because it embraces within itself both the 
facts of succession and permanence. These facts 
of succession and permanence are the primary pro- 
visions for the mind's unitary cognition of its own 
time, or of its present and past. 

Every one is perfectly familiar with the constant 
succession of ideas or thoughts. Within this sue- 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 153 

cession is always involved the knowledge of time. 
To be cognizant of succession is to be cognizant of 
time; for succession is but a, so to speak, broken 
or partitioned duration. But though the knowl- 
edge of time is always involved in the succession of 
thoughts, it is not because of the succession taken 
by itself or abstractly. This conclusion is generally 
maintained by psychologists. Many of them unite 
in the assertion, that a succession of ideas is not 
the idea of succession. Says Professor James : "A 
succession of feelings, in and of itself, is not a 
feeling of succession. And since, to our successive 
feelings a feeling of their own succession is added, 
that must be treated as an additional fact requiring 
its own special elucidation." * It must be acknowl- 



* Psychology, I. 628. 

Volkmann remarks: "Die succedierenden Vorstellungen 
noch nicht die Vorstellung der Succession sind, weil das suc- 
cessive Vorstellen nicht das Vorstellen der Succession ist. 
Folgt der Vorstellung A die Vorstellung B, so vertauscht das 
Bewusstsein eben eine Bestimmtheit mit der anderen : dass B 
nach A komme, ist fur unser Bewusstsein nirgends vorhanden, 
weil dieses Nach weder in der einen, noch in der andern, noch 
in einer dritten Vorstellung gegeben ist." (Lehrbuch d. Psy- 
chologic (Cornelius), II. p. 11.) 

" Successive impressions can not of themselves account 
for the perception of succession." (Philosophical Dictionary 
(Baldwin), II. p. 702 a.) 



154 Space and Time. 

edged to be a distinct problem of the first impor- 
tance to understand how a successive series of ideas 
is known, or knows itself, as such. And it is a 
problem of equal difficulty whether the series be 
conceived either as an open or a close one; that is, 
either as a series of separately existing ideas like 
the mental series as thought of by Hume, or as a 
series of connected ideas as understood by the later 
psychologists who define the mind as a process or 
stream. 

The great defect in a successive series, taken in 
itself or abstractly, especially a series considered as 
discrete, is that there is nothing in it to hold the suc- 
cessive terms together, to bind them in a unity of 
a succession known as a succession or as temporal. 
Another very important fact to be considered, and 
one true of both discontinuous and continuous suc- 
cessions, is, that the terms pass one after another 
and are gone, so that at each moment there is only 
one term, or only simultaneous terms, present. But 
a single term or simultaneous terms can not afford 
the thought of succession. The words of James Mill 
are pertinent : " One idea would follow another. 
But that would be all. Each of our successive states 
of consciousness, the moment it ceased, would be 
gone forever. Each of those momentary states 



Nature and Cognition of Time). 155 

would be our whole being." * It seems quite evi- 
dent, therefore, that to know a succession of ideas 
as a succession there must be more than the pure 
or abstract succession itself. The succession must 
be united with permanency; the successive ideas 
must be associated with a permanent element, or a 
permanent identical something, which runs along 
with them, which survives them as they pass and 
perish, and is capable of holding them in the unity 
of a known succession, f 

What, then, is this permanent identical factor 
that continues through the succession of our ideas 
and makes possible knowledge of them as successive 



* Analysis (J. S. Mill's edition), I. p. 319. 

t" There is a permanent in the perception of change, 
which goes right through the succession and holds it to- 
gether." (Bradley, Appearance and Reality, p. 52.) 

"Without an identity to which all its members are re- 
lated, a series is not one, and therefore is not a series." 
(/&., p. 49.) 

"If all things flowed the illusion of permanence would be 
impossible. There must be some permanent factor somewhere 
to make the notion possible. A flow can not exist for itself, 
but only for the abiding. The knowledge of change depends 
on some fixed factor which, by its permanence, reveals the 
change as change. * * * It is commonly overlooked by 
speculators that succession and change can exist, as such, only 
for the abiding." (Bowne, Metaphysics, Second ed., p. 60.) 



156 Space and Time. 

or temporal ? Various answers have been given to 
this question; some of which we shall attentively 
consider later on. The answer to be given here 
will, we are aware, find but little favor with many 
of our professional psychologists. This permanent 
something coexistent with the successive ideas, and 
continuing while they are transient, is the mental 
substance, which is the bearer, the subject, the 
producer, of all our successive thoughts or con- 
scious modes. The thought of succession or time 
always occurs with our successive thoughts, not 
only because they are successive, but also because 
of their momentary but unbreakable relation to the 
temporal, permanent, identical mental reality. The 
unconscious mind indeed knows nothing. The mind 
knows only in its conscious modes; but because of 
its permanent identity it is capable of cognizing the 
time of its successive experiences or the stream of 
consciousness and its own time. 

Mind embraces within itself both succession and 
permanency. This is nearly the same fact as that 
the mind embraces within itself both change and 
the unchanging. Change is indeed succession, but 
it may be something more; and the unchanging is 
not entirely the same as the permanently identical. 
A very important problem for the psychologist is 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 157 

to divide, and define with reference to each other, 
the successive in mind and the permanent, change 
and the unchanging. We shall treat of this prob- 
lem here only very briefly ; a fuller discussion of it 
will more fitly find place in a chapter on the nature 
of the soul. Change in mind is the succession of 
our varied conscious modes. The unchanging in 
mind are the permanent possibilities of the con- 
scious modes, or the permanent potentialities which 
are realized and revealed in the conscious modes. 
The permanent possibilities or potentialities are 
real; they are the elements or constituents of the 
unitary and indivisible substantial mind, and are 
always essentially the same with themselves. The 
unchanging nature of these permanent potentialities 
is made manifest in the identity of our conscious 
modes through life. Many sensations remain the 
same from childhood to age; the sky has the same 
blueness, and many other objects have the same 
color. Many pleasures and pains, passions and 
affections, continue the same. The feeling of duty 
is the same for many years. Volition is the same 
exertion of mind. Changes of conscious modes 
and the unchanging in mind, correspond to motions 
and identical substance in a material body. The 
mind has changes and permanent identity, just as 



158 Space and Time. 

a material object may have successive and varying 
motions with permanence and identity. Change in 
mind is temporal. And so is the unchanging; it 
has duration. 

The mind we say is cognizant of its past, or 
embraces its past and present experience in the unity 
of knowledge, on the primary condition of its own 
permanent identity; or, which is the same, because 
itself had a past and has endured in identity from 
the past to the present. There is no immediate 
knowledge of past experiences; for they have van- 
ished. But the mind that had the experiences has 
not vanished, it has continued the same to the 
present; and because of its being in the past and 
in the present, it is competent to embrace the past 
and present in a unitary and indissoluble knowl- 
edge. It should yet be considered that while our 
knowledge of the past and present is a unitary 
knowledge, it still consists of two distinct modes 
of knowledge, namely, the direct knowledge of the 
present, and a sort of mediate knowledge of the past 
or a belief. 

We have before recognized the important fact 
often emphasized that we have immediate knowl- 
edge of the present only, and the need of ascer- 
taining what kind is our knowledge of the past, 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 159 

Knowledge of the past has often been called mediate 
knowledge; but psychologists in many cases have 
failed to attempt a careful and thorough account of 
its character as mediate.* It seems clear that our 
knowledge of the past is not mediate in the sense 
of being inferential. For we are never conscious 
in this cognition of inferring, or of any process of 
ratiocination whatsoever. Our cognition is abso- 
lutely unreasoned, spontaneous, involuntary. It is 
most distinctly a conviction or belief which rises 
into consciousness without induction or deduction 
of any sort. We may call it mediate, on the ground 
of the conjecture that it comes through abiding 
modifications of the mind caused by the presenta- 
tions remembered; yet how the mind produces the 
belief in the past from its own enduring modifica- 
tions is to us an insoluble mystery. It is a present 
conviction of an experience which is gone ; a knowl- 
edge of something which is no more. Memory or 
the thought of the past is a double mystery. It is 
a mystery in its rise, as is every mode of conscious- 
ness. Again, it is a mystery in being a cognition 



* Sir W. Hamilton acutely remarks of memory : " In phil- 
osophical propriety it is not a knowledge of the past at all, 
but a knowledge of the present and a belief of the past." 
(Metaphysics, p. 153.) 



160 Space and Time. 

of something not present, but absent. We can 
only conclude in general that present remembering 
thought does not produce the conviction of the 
past, but is itself in an undiscoverable manner the 
product and revelation of the past, or has as its 
necessary cause the actual endurance of the mind 
from the past to the present. We must suppose that 
permanent reality by some means causes thought, 
and not thought permanent reality or the false 
appearance of it. 

Our knowledge, therefore, of the time of the 
mind, or the relation of its present to its past, is 
a union of immediate and a peculiar species of 
mediate knowledge, — immediate knowledge of pres- 
ent affection of mind and mediate knowledge of 
past affection. But though the knowledge consists 
of these two modes, it is a genuine unitary know- 
ing. We know the past as such only with the 
immediate knowledge of the present. We know the 
present as such only with the mediate knowledge 
of the past. The cognition is of two kinds, but yet 
one and indivisible, as are in a manner the past and 
present themselves. 

According to the above view, then, our thought 
does not produce duration, but real duration pro- 
duces or is the necessary foundation of our thought. 



Nature and Cognition of Time:. 161 

We must conclude that if the mind did not continue 
in its identity from the past to the present, the 
thought of the past would not exist and would be 
impossible. The mind has, with its permanence and 
identity, the unique capability of knowing, repro- 
ducing, remembering, its past experience. If it 
vanished as its past experience has vanished, there 
would never be a thought of that experience. The 
possibility of it would be extinguished. An abstract 
succession of perishing ideas or conscious modes, 
whether continuous or discontinuous, could never 
give the knowledge of the past or of time. 

But though the actual duration of the mind is 
the most apprehensible and satisfactory cause of the 
thought of its duration or the duration of expe- 
rience, it does not afford a complete answer to 
questions regarding the rise of the thought of the 
mental past. The very profound and difficult ques- 
tion yet remains : Since, as is generally held, we 
have immediate knowledge only of present states 
of mind, how yet, even with the permanence and 
identity of the mind, with its real duration, do we 
possess with the knowledge of the present the 
thought also of the past? How can our present 
thought grasp the past? How comes the thought 
of the present to be indissolubly yoked in con- 
(ii) 



162 Space; and Tims. 

sciousness with the thought of the past? It must 
be confessed that we have here an unanswerable 
question, and that so far the rise of the idea of the 
past is inexplicable. There is no adequate faculty of 
introspection. We conjecture that past experience, 
a past sensation or other presentation, produces a 
permanent change, modification, effect, in the mind, 
and that in this permanent effect or in immediate 
association with it there is the permanent possibility 
or capability of the reproduction of the past expe- 
rience which produced it. None the less does it 
remain a mystery how the present reproduction or 
representation carries with it the conviction that it 
is an image of the past, that there was a past 
experience as really as there is the present represen- 
tation. We have, therefore, at last only the general 
conclusion, that the actual duration or permanence 
of the mind, its real continuance in identity from 
the past to the present, is an indispensable condition 
of the thought of the past. But how even the per- 
manent mind becomes aware of a successive series 
of feelings, or how in a present act it cognizes a 
past act, is incomprehensible. The best thing we 
seem able to do is to accept the inexplicable fact 
as ultimate. 



Nature and Cognition of Time:. 163 

We should yet remark, to meet a possible query, 
that, in affirming that the mind knows the past 
because it was in the past and survives, there is in 
no wise involved the conclusion that the mind then 
can know only its own past or the past where it 
itself was. The mind easily knows past time much 
longer than its own — time extending backward 
immeasurably farther than the beginning of its own 
existence. The only assumption we make is that 
the mind's knowledge of its own past is the indis- 
pensable ground for its knowledge of longer past 
time; that its knowledge and measurement of the 
longest times is the ideal repetition, multiplication 
and continuance of its own duration. 

It has been accepted and employed above as a 
fundamental principle, that the mind knows the past 
because itself had a past; or that the knowledge of 
time has its necessary ground in the mind's real 
time, that the knowledge is but the self-revelation 
of the property. Many metaphysicians have stoutly 
contended for just the opposite principle, namely, 
that the mind knows time because it is itself not in 
time or is timeless; that if the mind or self were 
not timeless or were not capable of a timeless per- 



164 Space; and Time. 

ception of succession, the perception of succession 
would not be. They claim that the succession of 
experience, to be known as successive or temporal, 
must be represented simultaneously by the timeless 
mind or consciousness ; that succession is not known 
in contrast with permanence, but in contrast with 
timelessness. We quote from statements of Pro- 
fessor Green : " The relation of events to each other 
as in time implies their equal presence to a subject 
which is not in time. There could be no such thing 
as time if there were not a self-consciousness which 
is not in time."* He says also: "Neither can any 
process of change yield a consciousness of itself, 
which, in order to be a consciousness of the change, 
must be equally present to all stages of the change ; 
nor can any consciousness of change, since the 
whole of it must be present at once, be itself a pro- 
cess of change."f "A succession always implies 
something else than the terms of the succession, 
and that a 'something else' which can simultane- 
ously present to itself objects as existing not simul- 
taneously, but one after another." J "The eternal 
subject, which is the condition of their being a 
succession in time, can not itself exist as a succes- 



* Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 55. fib., p. 22. %Ib. p. 34. 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 165 

sion. And its reproduction of itself in man carries 
with it the same characteristic." * 

Our first resistance to the apparent teaching of 
these passages is against the assumption of a time- 
less mind or subject and timeless consciousness or 
thought. The truth appears to be that there is not 
a reality on earth known to be timeless or out of 
time. There is not apparent the least real evidence 
of a timeless subject or entity of any kind in the 



* Prolegomena to Ethics, p. 105. 

"If there were nothing unchanging and timeless in the 
mind, the knowledge of succession could never arise. The 
mind must gather up its experiences in a single timeless act 
in order to become aware of succession. The conceptions 
which are arranged in a temporal order must coexist in the 
timeless act which grasps and arranges them. The conception 
of sequence not only does not involve a sequence of concep- 
tions, but it would be impossible if it did. The perception of 
time, then, is as timeless as the perception of space is space- 
less. The things which are perceived in time must yet coexist 
in timeless thought in order to be so perceived." (Bowne, 
Metaphysics, p. 174.) 

"A continuous ideation, flowing from one point to an- 
other, would indeed occupy time, but not represent it, for it 
would exchange one element of succession for another instead 
of grasping the whole succession at once. Both points — the 
beginning and the end — are equally essential to the conception 
of time and must be present with equal clearness together." 
(Herbart, quoted by James, Psychology, I. p. COS.) 



166 Space and Time. 

universe as far as it is known. Time is every- 
where; it is upon everything. An unchanging 
reality is temporal; for it has duration. We have 
never cognized, we can not even imagine, a time- 
less thing. Of course, by composition of words, by 
the aid of prefixes and suffixes, we can easily speak 
of the non-temporal, the timeless, the out-of-time; 
but such is the forceful and perpetual dominion of 
time over our mind that we are unable to conceive 
or picture it. We can no more imagine things 
out of time than we can out of space. And even 
thought is not timeless, but temporal; the thought 
of time itself is temporal. Our first thought of time 
is as long as the time thought of; but on the basis 
of this primitive cognition we soon become capable 
of cognizing a much longer, at last an almost 
incalculably longer, time than our thought. This is 
the result of the synthetic function of the intellect 
operating with the primitive simple experiences. 

Next, we can not yield to, but must resist, the 
unqualified capital predication, that the terms of a 
succession can at once be "equally present " to con- 
sciousness, or consciousness equally present to them. 
It seems to involve a grave misapprehension of the 
most significant facts in the cognition of time. 
For, in every ordinary successive series of mental 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 167 

affections, only the last term of the series is pres- 
ent to consciousness; the antecedent terms are not 
equally present with the last term, indeed they are 
not present at all, they are only represented by 
reproductions of themselves or by memories. And, 
further, even the memories of the antecedent terms 
are not equally present ; for they differ in vividness, 
the memories of the nearer terms being brighter 
than those of the remoter. In apparently ignoring 
the fact that the terms of a succession are, in the 
way just stated, not equally present to conscious- 
ness, Professor Green neglects the most important 
fact in the cognition of succession or time. 

Undoubtedly, in the cognition of succession, as 
a succession coming down from the past to the 
present, a simultaneous series of phenomena must 
be present to consciousness. But this series is not 
a series of presentations, like the original terms of 
an ordinary successive series; it is composed of a 
presentation and memories, — of one (that is, the 
last) term present for itself, and the others present 
only by their representative images. It is because 
of this very inequality or unlikeness of the terms of 
the present simultaneous series — because the series 
is a union of presentation and representations — 
that the cognition of succession is possible. If the 



168 Spac^ and Tims. 

terms were "equally present " to consciousness, as 
Professor Green seems obtusely to mean, not suc- 
cession would be cognized, but only simultaneity 
or coexistence; and, with this fact, we are left to 
wonder how the thought of succession could ever 
come in. In the consciousness of the simultaneous 
series, composed of a presentation and memory- 
images, we are cognizant of succession only because 
the series represents an actual successive series that 
is past or in part past. It is useless to assert or 
suppose that the knowledge of succession does or 
ever can come out of pure simultaneity — simul- 
taneity of undifferentiated units or undifferentiated 
presentation and representation. 

But the question yet remains, how can a present 
thought have hold of, or be known as the image of, 
a past experience? how can a present simultaneous 
series of presentation and representations make us 
cognizant or convinced of a past successive series? 
This is the deep mystery of memory, which has 
been already dwelt upon; and we can only repeat 
our confession that it seems insoluble. We can go 
no farther towards a solution than the fact that the 
mind, on account of its own real endurance from 
the past, is able to cause in a present thought or 
memory-image the conviction of the past, or to 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 169 

cause, in a cognition embracing simultaneous phe- 
nomena, the conviction of a succession. The mind 
was in the past and has endured, and for that rea- 
son it can think in the present of the past, or has 
the unique and inexplicable power of attaching or 
imparting to a present feeling the belief of the past. 
This result is identical with the doctrine we 
were advocating above, that only a temporal mind 
can cognize time, or that the mind cognizes time 
because time is its property. The psychologists 
whom we have just quoted from teach that only a 
timeless subject can cognize succession or time, 
"that there could be no such thing as time if there 
were not a self-consciousness which is not in time," 
that a succession to be known as such must be a 
simultaneity to a non-temporal mind. Why should 
they assert and so resolutely contend for this view ? 
Is it because they suppose the cognition of time 
requires the contrast between succession and time- 
lessness? or that the thought of succession can 
only come out of the pure thought of simultaneity ? 
Such suppositions are quite unjustifiable. Succes- 
sion can not be known without comparison with 
permanence; it can be known only against perma- 
nence as a background, or it is held together in 
thought by the permanent that continues through 



170 Space: and Time. 

it ; it is known in contrast of itself with permanence 
within the unity of the knowing subject; but there 
is no necessity for contrast with the timeless. As 
far as we know there is no timeless subject or reality 
of any kind in existence, not even an imaginable 
one, which would make such a contrast a genuine 
actuality. 

The doctrine of the perception of time by the 
timeless seems to go on the main postulate, that the 
timeless subject creates time and the knowledge of 
it, or that it makes time in the knowing of it. But 
such a postulate is unreasonable. It is quite deficient 
in evidence. There is no proof that man's mind 
possesses such creative power respecting anything. 
It no more makes time in the knowing of it than 
it makes spatial extension in the knowing of it. 
Time precedes and is independent of our thought, 
like space; and both temporal and spatial series are 
of our original and simple experiences. A theory 
of the cognition of time, or of anything else, that 
demands for the mind such great power and liberty 
of creation should be allocated to the realm of myth 
rather than to the realm of genuine science. How 
can the timeless mind produce a reality or property 
that is directly opposed to its own nature? This 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 171 

would be unnatural causation. A cause can pro- 
duce something like itself, but not its contrary or 
opposite. Not a timeless mind creates time, but a 
temporal mind produces the thought of time. 

We therefore earnestly reject the hypothesis of 
the perception and creation of time by the time- 
less, and accept as more reasonable and altogether 
superior the doctrine, that the mind perceives time 
because it is itself temporal, that the mind because 
of its own real duration is capable of the knowledge 
of duration, that the knowledge is the expression 
and revelation of the mind's real quality. We must 
contend that the conception of revelation is superior 
to the conception of creation ; that causation of the 
like is more reasonable than causation of the con- 
trary ; that the production by the mind of a thought 
corresponding to itself is more reasonable than the 
production of a thought opposite to itself, or the 
production of the thought of time by a temporal 
cause more reasonable than by a timeless one ; and, 
conversely, that it is more reasonable that a thought 
should be of a character corresponding to its pro- 
ducer, than of the opposite character. But we shall 
save words here. It is not our purpose to attempt 
an exhaustive statement of a theory, and to meet. 



172 Space and Time. 

so far as possible, all actual and supposable objec- 
tions. We only aim and hope to present capital 
points in a clearly intelligible form. 

A large number of psychologists explain the 
cognition of time on the presupposition, which is 
fundamental with them, that there is no perma- 
nent and identical mental subject, and that the 
only mind, and all of mind, is the abstract succes- 
sion of thoughts or stream of consciousness. The 
only certain permanent and identical reality they 
acknowledge in psychology is, not the mind, but 
the neural organism, especially the brain, which is 
conceived to be the subject, support, if not gener- 
ator, of the successive mental phenomena. Among 
the most distinguished representatives of this school 
of psychologists is Professor W. James; and we 
design to give here some special consideration to 
his discussion of time-cognition. The rich and bril- 
liant, though somewhat irregular and imperfectly 
articulated, chapter in his Psychology on the per- 
ception of time is well and widely known, and 
therefore any references to it will be easily and 
immediately understood. 

The essence of Professor James' theory of the 
cognition of time seems to be contained in the 



Nature; and Cognition of Time. 173 

following propositions : " The brain-processes of 
various events must be active simultaneously, and 
in varying strength, for a time-perception to be pos- 
sible." * "There is at every moment a cumulation 
of brain-processes overlapping each other, of which 
the fainter ones are the dying phases of processes 
which but shortly previous were active in a maximal 
degree. The Amount of the Overlapping deter- 
mines the feeling of the Duration Occupied/' f 
"The feeling of a time-duration is the immediate 
effect of such overlapping of brain-processes of 
different phase." % 

The primary question with our author is, To 
what cerebral process or particular element "is the 
sense of time due"? This question is indeed pri- 
mary because of the great importance assigned by 
him in general to the brain in the production of the 
mental experiences, and of the importance imputed 
in particular to the brain as the organ of the 
mnemonic functions of retention and reproduction. 
He thus answers this cardinal question of the rela- 
tion of brain-processes to the sense of time : "It can 
not, as we have seen, be due to the mere duration 
itself of the process; it must be due to an element 



* Psychology, I. p. 632. f lb., p. 635. t lb., p. 637. 



174 Space and Time. 

present at every moment"* He remarks again: 
"The cause of the intuition [of time— especially 
the "specious present"] which we really have can 
not be the duration of our brain-processes or our 
mental changes. That duration is rather the object 
of the intuition which, being realized at every 
moment of such duration, must be due to a per- 
manently present cause. This cause — probably the 
simultaneous presence of brain-processes of differ- 
ent phase — fluctuates."! This permanent cause or 
element is the supreme factor in Professor James' 
theory of time-perception, and therefore requires 
special notice. 

The first thing to be ascertained is the nature 
of the permanent element, or the particular char- 
acter of its permanency. This permanency is the 
overlapping or partial simultaneity of waning and 
waxing brain-processes, and its peculiar character is 
to be noted. It is obviously only the permanency 
of a floating simultaneity; and is therefore of very 
different nature from what is commonly meant by 
permanency. What we commonly mean by a per- 
manent element or thing is something that remains 
identical through changes or succession, that does 



* Psychology, I. p. 632. fib., p. 642. 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 175 

not pass with the succession, but abides after the 
succession has ceased. For instance, we would say 
that a rolling stone has permanence, because it con- 
tinues the same through the revolutions, and abides 
when the revolutions have ceased. But Professor 
James' permanence of simultaneity has not that 
character. In the simultaneity of brain-processes 
everything is on the go. The simultaneity moves 
on with the processes. It does not continue the 
same; but is constantly changing in character with 
the special character of the processes it at each 
moment embraces. It does not remain after the 
processes have passed and ended; but ends with 
them. Therefore it is evident that the permanence 
of the simultaneity of successions is quite different 
from the permanence of an identical thing and from 
genuine permanence. 

Here we seem to discover a fatal defect in Pro- 
fessor James' theory of time-perception. It appears 
certain that, as already maintained, a process or 
succession can be known as such, not taken by 
itself, but only in comparison with a permanent 
element, which runs along w T ith or through the suc- 
cession, and renders awareness of it, or the holding 
of it in a unitary thought, possible. This is admit- 
ted by many psychologists. Our author himself 



176 Space and Tims. 

expressly says : The sense of time is not due to the 
mere duration itself of the brain-process, but to an 
"element present at every moment/' or to a "per- 
manently present cause." He remarks also, as we 
have noted, of mental succession : "A succession of 
feelings is not in and of itself a feeling of succes- 
sion." The permanently present element or cause 
he appears to mean is the simultaneity of brain-pro- 
cesses varying in strength. But, as just observed, 
this is no real permanent cause, it has little of 
what is usually called permanency; for it does not 
preserve identity, and remain after the processes 
which it includes have ceased; it moves, changes, 
and perishes, with the processes. There is here only 
a succession or peculiar mode of duration, but no 
genuine permanency. The like must be said of 
the simultaneity of the mental processes which are 
supposed to be caused by, and which immediately 
accompany, the brain-processes, and whose succes- 
sion or time is alone directly known. It constitutes 
no true permanent element. It is not the element 
demanded in order that a succession of feelings 
may be aware of itself as a succession. Professor 
James seems to be deceived in supposing such a 
permanence is sufficient for the perception of time, 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 177 

or is the sort of permanence which the perception 
requires. The simultaneity is really but a succes- 
sion and passes with the successions it unites. It 
can contribute nothing to the cognition of succes- 
sion. From such a simultaneity no thought of 
succession can ever spring. 

But Professor James believes in and makes con- 
spicuous use of a true permanent reality, which, 
very strangely, he leaves, as regards its permanence, 
without distinct recognition in his discussion of 
time-cognition. In many sections of his Psychology 
he clearly and freely treats the brain as a persistent 
entity, a permanent subject of successive and sim- 
ultaneous motions or processes, — which precedes 
processes, endures in its identity with them, and 
remains when they have passed. He also speaks of, 
and deems very important, permanent brain-paths, 
or established lines of motion in the brain, each of 
which may be at one time "active" and at another 
time "slumbering."* Here is a genuine permanent 
cause ; not a mere simultaneity of processes or mo- 
tions; but a permanent and identical reality which, 
coexistent with the motions, also possesses them and 
abides when they have ended. This cause possesses 



* Psychology, I. p. 655. 
(12) 



178 Spacs and Time. 

the sort of permanency which is demanded and is 
indispensable in time-perception. 

It is quite obvious, therefore, that, in his theory 
of the cognition of time, Professor James does 
not, for some reason, distinguish and "work" the 
permanent brain, which he so freely and fully 
acknowledges and employs elsewhere, for all it 
should be worth. It ought to have, in his cerebral 
theory of time-perception, a like place and signifi- 
cance to that which the permanent and identical 
soul has in the spiritualistic theory. If the brain by 
its permanent "organized paths" retains and repro- 
duces thought, it ought mainly by the same means 
to produce the sense of time. If the paths are the 
"permanent ground"* of retention and recall, why 
should they not be distinctly owned as the perma- 
nent ground of time-perception? The persistent 
brain is a good deal more than the transient pro- 
cesses of its activity, for it continues when they 
have ceased ; why, then, is the persistence not of as 
much importance in time-cognition as the processes ? 
But he leaves the permanent brain without partic- 
ular recognition; treating the brain-processes, with 
their succession and overlapping or simultaneity, as 



* Psychology, I. pp. 654-5. 



Nature; and Cognition of Time. 179 

if they were abstracted from, or had no important 
or necessary relation to, the permanent brain in the 
perception of time. This course as to the brain is 
just like the, course of those who take the process 
of our thoughts or the stream of consciousness as 
if entirely abstracted from the permanent soul, or 
as if it were itself the complete and only soul. But 
in these conceptions of cerebral process and mental 
process there is no recognition of a real permanent 
element — of a real permanent brain or a real per- 
manent soul ; and there is, therefore, left unnoticed 
and unappreciated a primary condition of the feel- 
ing of duration, of the knowledge of a succession as 
a succession, of the representation of a succession 
simultaneously or at one moment, or the present 
feeling of a past time. A real permanent entity 
seems to be indispensable for the sense of time even 
within the short and bright tract of the so-called 
" specious present." 

There are two principal conditions of the feeling 
of time-duration, or of the cognition of a succession 
as a succession, namely, a succession, and a perma- 
nent and identical element in or with the succession. 
There must be a succession, a real succession, to be 
known. But since a succession in and of itself is 
not a known succession, there must be a reality 



180 Space and Time. 

of permanent identity as the necessary condition of 
the succession being aware of itself as a succession, 
or of past segments of the succession being known 
at the present moment. There must be an entity 
which, because of its permanence, was present with 
every part of the succession, and for that reason 
can at a moment represent simultaneously the suc- 
cession, — which, because it was present to all parts, 
and remains in its identity after the antecedent parts 
have perished, can make a unitary representation at 
one moment of the past parts, or cause the feeling 
of past time to exist in a present feeling. Such a 
permanent entity is indispensable to the cognition 
of time. It must be contended, then, that the cog- 
nition of time could never occur witM the pure 
thought-succession or stream of consciousness which 
many assert to be the whole of mind, denying the 
existence and necessity of a permanent mind or 
soul. No matter how perfectly continuous the suc- 
cession may be by close connection and overlapping, 
yet there is altogether wanting a permanent element 
of that character which is absolutely necessary to 
the feeling of time ; certainly, if the permanent brain 
be not owned, and if it be not the adequate perma- 
nent and sole cause of the mental stream, or be not 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 181 

itself the real mind. The stream could never be 
aware of itself as a stream. The claim of self- 
knowledge for the stream involves an unconscious 
surreption. In truth, the whole of the stream at 
any moment is the passing thought; and this sole 
living thought can not of itself know anything of 
the past. It has no permanence at all ; it was never 
in the past ; it has no real hold on the past as past ; 
and the feeling of the past is impossible to it. The 
present momentary thought is not less completely 
separated from its antecedents than if it were sepa- 
rated by a void space or impassable gulf; since its 
antecedents have perished. The primitive percep- 
tion of time depends upon the continuous motions of 
the brain that arouse continuous mental experiences, 
with which the feeling of time is directly given 
because of the permanent identity of the mental 
substance to which they belong, — which substance 
has a permanence corresponding to the permanence 
cerebralists impute to the brain. 

In his hypothesis of time-perception, Professor 
James reckons very great importance to the so- 
called "specious present/' which has a duration of 
several seconds only. He says of it : " The original 
paragon and prototype of all conceived times is 



182 Space and Time. 

the specious present, the short duration of which 
we are immediately and incessantly sensible.' ' * He 
remarks also : "A creature might be entirely devoid 
of reproductive memory, and yet have the time- 
sense ; but the latter would be limited, in his case, to 
the few seconds immediately passing by."f With 
respect to these statements we observe first, that they 
seem to contain the implication of an immediate or 
direct intuition of duration, without memory. But 
such intuition is quite disputable. Memory is as 
really concerned in the perception of time within the 
charmed space of the .specious present, as of any 
time extending beyond it. Whenever there is the 
sense of time or succession with simultaneous affec- 
tions of consciousness, however brief the succession 
and the simultaneity, memory seems certainly to be 
involved. The shortest succession known is known 
by comparison and union with real permanence 
which has retention and reminiscence; a conclu- 
sion that seems not in discord with the full use 
Professor James makes, in his chapter on Memory, 
of the permanent " nerve-substance' ' or permanent 
"cerebral substratum." J The consciousness of a 
musical melody or rhythm within the specious pres- 



* Psychology, I. p. 631. t lb., p. 630. $/&., p. 657. 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 183 

ent is possible, not solely or primarily because of 
the overlapping of cerebral processes and of mental 
processes, but because the mind, owing to its perma- 
nent identity, simultaneously represents successive 
tones. Professor Royce speaks of sequence as being 
grasped at once, and as thus grasped " not through 
mere memory, but by virtue of actual experience.' ' * 
It is very doubtful whether a sequence is ever 
grasped and felt as such, or actually experienced, 
without memory. If there were not actual perma- 
nence, which is much more than simultaneity of 
processes or successions, and memory, the shortest 
time, any time at all, would be incognizable. The 
" specious present," as treated by various writers, 
has a likeness, in its vagueness, to the "extensity" 
which is advocated by some psychologists; and is 
liable to the same danger, namely, the danger of 
being used as a means by surreption. 

It is a fact of the first importance pertaining to 
the specious present, that within it the cognition of 
time is as long as the time cognized. Every cog- 
nition of time is, not timeless, but temporal; but 
all cognitions of time are not as long as the times 
cognized ; many known times are vastly longer than 



* The World and the Individual, I. p. 142. 



184 Space and Time. 

the times of knowing them, as the times of history 
and some of the sciences; but within the few sec- 
onds of the specious present the time of knowing is 
as long as the time known. This knowing that is 
as long as the time known is the foundation fact 
in our total cognition of time. It is the necessary- 
basis of all knowledge of times longer than the 
process of knowledge. Starting with this primitive 
perception, we advance by the synthesizing intellect 
to the knowledge of the time of our life or total 
personal experience; and by the time of our per- 
sonal experience we are made able to represent and 
measure prodigious time beyond it. 

Hitherto we have followed the proposition made 
at the outset to treat first chiefly of our cognition 
of past time, or of the relation of the present to 
the past, particularly of the relation of the mind's 
present to its past, and to omit for the most part 
the consideration of the future. This course is 
justifiable under the assumption that the knowledge 
of the past is the more certain and the necessary 
preliminary to the knowledge of the future. But the 
course is opposed to the contention of some psychol- 
ogists. For example, it has been said: "On the 
whole, anticipation of the future must be regarded 



Nature and Cognition of Time. 185 

as prior in the order of development to reminiscence 
of the past. For the primary stimulus to ideational 
activity comes from practical needs; and these are 
in the first instance concerned with the future."* 
We can not, however, but think that the writer here 
reverses the true order of occurrence. Rather, we 
come to expect the future because of the previous 
involuntary and necessitated experience of the rela- 
tion of the past to the present. We come to know 
the present as having been future to the past; and 
by this experience, as the primary condition, we are 
led to expect a future to our present. We thus 
anticipate a future becuase we know a future has 
been. Without knowledge of a past future, so to 
speak, there would be no thought of a future to 
come. Thought does not, under the stimulus of 
emotion, create the future, but only forecasts what 
has been. In fine, familiarity with the relation of 
the present to the past and of the past to the pres- 
ent is the ruling primitive prompting or condition 
to the anticipation of the future. Memory precedes 
expectation. 

It is important in considering the knowledge of 
the future, as in considering the knowledge of the 



* Stout, Manual of Psychology, p. 497. 
(13) 



186 Space and Time. 

past, to remember that we have immediate knowl- 
edge only of the present. As we have no imme- 
diate knowledge of the past because it is gone, so 
we have no immediate knowledge of the future 
because it is not yet. Our knowledge of the future 
may be classified as mediate knowledge; but it is 
of a very peculiar character. We generally call it 
expectation; but it often involves great assurance. 
The knowledge of the future is the result of the 
necessary union of immediate and mediate knowl- 
edge. We know it only in connection with the 
immediate knowledge of the present The future 
is never separated from the present by actual par- 
tition, and expectation of it never exists apart from 
the immediate knowledge of the present. In this 
instance, the two modes of knowledge constitute an 
indivisible unit. 



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